As she stood before the ice skating rink at the center of Bryant Park, New York, dressed as Mrs Claus in a red velveteen outfit, trimmed with white faux fur, Alejandra Silva was the picture of Christmas — in Miami.
The dress was thigh-length, sleeveless and skin tight, and still, on the night before Christmas, she was overheating.
“I’m sweating,” Silva said, while her five-year-old son played underfoot.
Photo: Reuters
“Last year we made a snowman on our terrace,” she said, fanning herself. “This year my son wants an ice cream.”
Record-breaking warm weather has blanketed the region, lending an almost tropical feel to what should be a season of scarves and hot cocoa. Roses have bloomed in planters near the Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree, and at least one beach volleyball game — played shirtless — heated up on Christmas Eve in Central Park.
However, as the mercury hit 22°C the day before Christmas, and the temperature was 15°C at noon on the holiday itself, there was a sense that the heat had given an unwelcome dimension to the traditional holiday spirit.
All season long, Mohammad Mannan, 62, who helps run a newsstand in Times Square, has been hawking fuzzy Santa hats for US$3.
Last year, the hats sold briskly, 20 a day, said Mannan, who is originally from Bangladesh. The day before Christmas, he had sold only two.
“This is the weather in Bangladesh,” he said.
The warmth upended some holiday traditions.
Silva, 30, noted the thin layer of water atop the ice at Bryant Park, and did not let her son skate.
“It’s dangerous,” she said.
Next to the rink, at a pop-up restaurant called Celsius, ceiling fans whirred on high speed. In the pre-Christmas mugginess, even watching a yule log burn on a screen seemed too stifling.
In Greenwich Village, Bobby Gilliland, 70, a visitor from Northern Ireland on his last day of vacation, was wearing his new Christmas sweater featuring a penguin, also wearing a Christmas sweater.
He almost did not wear it, said his son, Rob, 39, an airline pilot.
“He said: ‘I’ll save it for the aircraft, because it will be cooler,’” his son said. “But I convinced him.”
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