It’s a magical season. A flying sleigh and reindeer, the birth of a savior, a tiny bit of oil lasting eight days. Love, family, friends, food.

The ability of twinkling lights and festivities to make cold, dreary nights warm and cheery.

Tuesday evening I stood in the pouring rain, completely distracted from how freezing and soggy I was. That’s the magic of the first ever Tree Lighting Skate-tacular at Bryant Park Winter Village.

Bravo to Bryant Park for setting itself apart from Rockefeller Center by making the skating rink the focus of this tree lighting! From now until March, you can get on the Bryant Park Winter Village ice FOR FREE! No, you can’t rent skates for free, but if you have your own it really is free! Bring your own lock and you can even use provided lockers for free to store your shoes! Bryant Park is my favorite place to skate in the city.

You really feel like your in the middle of picturesque Manhattan. You get great views of iconic buildings: the public library to the west, the lights of Chrysler Building peek over the roof, the Empire State Building and the art deco “Radiator Building” to the south. All around the rink are adorable holiday shops, perfect from grabbing a hot cider and snack after skating.

So that’s why the skating rink is awesome on most days. On Tuesday it was even more so! Olympic ice skaters whose names you likely recognize- Nancy Kerrigan, Brian Boitano, Johnny Weir and Charlie Davis & Meryl White- gave festive performances leading up to the lighting of the park’s Christmas tree.

The Tree Lighting Skate-Tacular

Can I just say how wonderful it is seeing skaters perform with joy rather than stress? In the atmosphere of the Olympics, where we usually see ice skating, everything is so competative. Performing for a tree lighting Skate-tacular, the passion these athletes have for the sport was paramount and I loved that.

In addition to Olympians, we were also treated to syncronized skating performances by The Haydenettes. I’d never seen syncronized skating before! After watching their performance I’m totally making the comparison: the Haydenettes are to skating as the Rockettes are to dancing. So fun to watch!

After the Haydenettes a group of girls (I’d guess they were aged 8-15) closed the show performing syncronized skating. How awesome it much have been for them to share a rink with their heroes!

They ran to give candy canes to the crowds at the end of their set. So cute!

And then they lit the tree! Fireworks! Lights make nights AND spirits bright!

I wasn’t prepared for rain falling on my camera. Most of these pictures are slightly blurred by raindrops on my lens, alas. It was literally raining pretty hard throughout all these performances but these skaters are such pros you’d never guess it.

Everyone waved in a final skate around the rink. Here’s Nancy Kerrigan (whose performance I missed cause…uh…I was late. Ugh. So typical, I know.)

Get yourself to Bryant Park Winter Village before the end of this season! It’s a fantastic date spot, ask someone you fancy on a holiDATE! You could start it with a drink at Celsius, a bar that is so warm and toasty inside and they serve fun festive drinks (you can see it on the left of the rink in many of my pictures). Check out the Winter Village calendar of events and have fun! A wonderful New York Cliché: make the most of the magic of the holiday season!