A city packs away its jolly; January is back-to-blech time

The Monday after the holidays is always awful. But last Monday, here in the capital of Christmas, life was particularly glum.

The weather made it clear that winter would overstay its welcome. The temperature hovered in the 20s and a wet snow early in the morning iced all the windshields. In New York you can actually hear the cold; blustery, frigid winds howl between the skyscrapers. And so much for miracles on 34th Street: Police had to close much of this major artery because icicles were crashing down off the Empire State Building.

Resentful New York children, returning to school after two weeks of staying up too late, had to dodge Christmas tree carcasses strewn across sidewalks. Now that the city no longer picks up these trees for recycling, the parks department was hoping to use separate work crews to collect them for mulching. But the sanitation workers’ union balked. Not even the prospect of a fragrant coat of wood chips on city parks could persuade them to forfeit the overtime they’d earn for dumping the trees in landfills.

It gets worse.

Half the men and a solid complement of New York women were comatose Monday. This wasn’t the usual post-vacation blues. The Giants had no business losing the playoff. By now this should be ancient history, but with Giant fans the heartbreak never ends. They’ll spend the next 20 years whining about the players losing their composure, blaming the coach, the refs and that middle-aged center who blew the last snap. “We were gypped,” Ralph Piccio, a doughnut shop clerk carped to a hung-over customer. “Ahhh, the Giants,” he replied. “They never should have moved to New Jersey.” (That was 27 years ago.)

And this is not the kind of place that suddenly gets happy because the Republicans decide to have their 2004 presidential convention here. The mayor announced this in a driving snowstorm mid-Monday. The image of thousands of Republicans traipsing around Madison Square Garden in elephant headdress in August is nothing less than grotesque to many stalwarts of this most Democratic of American cities.

By late afternoon Monday, dark as an Alaska morning, just about all of Gotham lay barren, denuded of red poinsettias and twinkling lights and holiday ornaments that since Thanksgiving had been the lush calling card of stores and homes behind tiny patches of potted greens that stand in for yards.

Bloomingdale’s had yanked life-sized toy soldiers out of its windows. Barney’s windows were swept clean, too, and it’s too bad Jennifer Lopez wasn’t around because this time if she had demanded the store be emptied so she could shop, the way she did in early December, it would have been no problem. The store was deserted, like every other shop having a clearance sale. Even the pregnant mannequins on display at A Pea in the Pod were naked on Madison Avenue. Only Saks Fifth Avenue’s mechanical holiday display celebrating the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, Russia, was still moving Monday because a movie about Eloise, the little girl who lived at the Plaza, was being filmed there.

If New York seems impervious to nature, barely inconvenienced by snowstorms, it does have its moods. It thrives from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, understanding that the lights and decorations and iconographic images of potbellied Santas in front of Macy’s have the twinkling allure to draw in the world and its pocketbooks.

Even with war pending, even with the economy aching, even with Sept. 11 still weighing on us, the holidays unfolded in New York as a respite. This Christmas also produced the miracle of snow. Then New Year’s Eve turned out to be unseasonably warm -- enough to allow men in tuxedos to shun overcoats and girls in strapless dresses to whip no more than a shawl around their shoulders as they watched the ball drop in Times Square.

And then last Monday the inevitable crash after the sugar high. Heads down, New Yorkers returned to their tasks knowing there wasn’t much ahead to distract them. For a while, no new major movies or Broadway shows will be opening; few new books will be published in January. How to fill the ugly void in the emotional life of a New Yorker who loves nothing more than attending a preview of a play if only for the pleasure of being snide about it before opening night?

Only shadows remain where there had been so much light.

And to top matters off, a local paper reported this week that Norwalk virus, that stomach disease that ravaged the cruise ship industry, is coming New York’s way.

All we can hope is that the plague has passed before America’s top culinary stars gather here this spring to judge the annual James Beard Awards. But everyone’s too bummed out to think that far down the calendar right now.