Christmas in New York

They don’t carve tombstones like this anymore—take a look at that elaborate serifed lettering. The Christmas family plot in Green-Wood Cemetery is one of the older plots, and I’d found it too not long ago. To find out more about the Christmas family, I turned to the reliable Brooklyn chronicler Maggie Blanck.

“Family patriarch Charles Christmas (1795-1868) was British immigrant who owned grand mansion in what is now called the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn that was known as the Christmas Mansion, at 2nd Place and Henry Street.”

Photo: Sarah Celentano

“Charles Christmas was one of the foremost brokers and bankers in this city. He is now a partner of the great banking house of A. Belmont & Co. Fortunate as Mr. Belmont seems to be in everything, he never was more fortunate than when he secured the brains, financial experience, and the integrity of Charles Christmas. He was for many years the chief manager of Prime, Ward & King, whose fame was worldwide. Their banking house was at 42 Wall Street. Mr. Christmas left that house in order to go into the same business at 44 Wall Street, with Robert I. Livingston in 1834, under the firm of Christmas & Livingston.”—Old Merchants of New York City

Christmas’ wife Harriet passed away in 1837, before Green-Wood Cemetery was established, so she was likely exhumed and reinterred in the Christmas Green-Wood plot.

Although he’s a ubiquitous figure from mid-November through December 26th, little is known of the daily existence of Santa Claus, who brings toys to good little boys and girls every Christmas Eve by somehow dragging his bulk, accompanied by sacks full of trinkets, down chimneys, even in homes that have no chimneys. We do know that his mode of transport will please environmentalists as no oil had to be fracked out of the earth’s mantle to power his chosen mode of transport; instead, he employs eight, sometimes nine, reindeer, beasts found in northern Scandinavia. Our knowledge of Claus comes mainly from the art of Thomas Nast, the poetry of Clement Clark Moore, and the music of singing cowboy Gene Autry. But what is Claus’ story? How was he appointed this role? Who owns his factory, purported by legend to be north of the Arctic Circle? How is it funded?

The legends abound. A 4th-century Greek bishop, Saint Nicholas of Myra, acquired the reputation of generosity that continued over the centuries until the Dutch built a further legend about him and contracted his name to “Sinterklaas,” and the British further adjusted this name and spelling to English pronunciation. The tradition spread to the States, and the three mages mentioned above crystallized the legend. However, many think that Claus walks the earth still; in the 1880s, Virginia O’Hanlon knew it and NY Sun editor Francis Church confirmed it. Claus, however, has remained totally resistant to modern media as the centuries have passed. For Claus, mystery is his greatest advantage, and it is mysterious he will remain.

While Claus is repeatedly “seen” coming “right down Santa Claus Lane,” no street of that name exists within the five boroughs of New York City. However there are a scattering of streets around town that remind one of Christmas, the anniversary of Jesus Christ’s birth that inspired Claus’ generosity.

Saint Nicholas, despite his Greek origins, is especially revered in northern Europe. He was the patron saint of New Amsterdam, the colony established by the Dutch in the 1620s, and the name of the first church established in the colony. St. Nicholas Ave., which zigs and zags around northern Manhattan from Central Park to Inwood, partially overlays an older road that was once a Native-American trail but was later employed by colonists and named Kingsbridge Road as it led to the toll bridge spanning Spuyten Duyvil and now is honored by innumerable Bronx neighborhoods. The routes of St. Nicholas Ave. and W. 125th St. were also laid out in addition to the preexisting older road, which became “St. Nicholas Avenue” in 1901 in the same spate of renaming that produced Columbus, Amsterdam and West End Aves., which had previously been 9th, 10th and 11th Aves.

There are two other streets named for St. Nicholas in Manhattan: St. Nicholas Terrace, which runs along the west side of St. Nicholas Park, and St. Nicholas Pl., uptown at W. 155th near where the Polo Grounds had been.

There’s a loose logic to the naming of the north-south avenues in Bushwick and Ridgewood that hark back to the Dutch colonial era. There’s St. Nicholas Ave. as well as Knickerbocker and Onderdonk Aves., as well as Irving Ave., which came along later on; it was named for Washington Irving, who wrote about Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle, figures in Dutch Colonial New Amsterdam: originally Hamburg Ave., it was renamed because of anti-German sentiment during World War I.

Here, we see some of the “street art” that appears on the rubric “Bushwick Collective” that centers around the junction of St. Nicholas Ave. and Troutman St. In this case, the spray can Van Goghs have repainted the name of a previous business, Putnam & Company, though the copy beneath the first line has been allowed to continue to fade.

The word “noel” is derived from the French word for “birth,” ultimately from the Latin; English employs the root in the words “native” and even “nature.” Over the centuries it’s come to mean Christmas carols and the holiday itself. Oddly, the word is two syllables in this context, and as a man’s name, just one. The feminine form keeps the two syllables.

In Brooklyn, Noel Ave. is way down there: it’s in the south end of Gerritsen Beach, the insular neighborhood tucked between Marine Park and Shell Bank Creek, the waterline pictured here. Here, Noel Ave. interrupts a set of streets named in alphabetical order, from Abbey Court, Beacon Court, through the M street, Madoc Ave.. Noel Ave. appears between the F and G courts, Frank and Gain. Gerritsen Beach is neatly divided into two halves by a creek inlet, with only Gerritsen Avenue connecting them.

Broad Channel’s only two churches, St. Virgilius Roman Catholic and Christ Presbyterian are a half block away from each other on Noel Rd. and Church Rd. (the latter is probably named for the Presbyterian church). The Catholic church and school are modest buildings dating to 1924. The St. Virgilius convent, which appears similar to a regular residential building save for the presence of a cross above the front door, is a few blocks away. St. Virgilius merged with St. Camillus on the peninsula in 2008; when Christ Presbyterian was damaged by fire and storms, St. Virgilius welcomed its congregation.

The positioning of Noel Rd. is unusual, as it’s the only named east-west road in Broad Channel. The island has its own street numbering system independent from the rest of Queens (as does the Rockaway peninsula) with East and West roads from 1 through 22, divided into east and west sectors by Cross Bay Boulevard. Noel Rd. runs east and west between 7th and 8th (see the Google map). How did this come about? That’s another mystery.

—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)