One month of Christmas, gift wrapped, please.

Even if you’re busy rolling your eyes and sighing morosely over the inescapable crush of Christmas commercialism, you have to admire the galvanizing effect of the festive season. Whatever holiday you are celebrating, (and I’ll bet my red-hot credit card you’re celebrating something), it still manages to whip us into a froth to rival any Starbucks’ barista.

This time it’s not only about marketing ploys and product placement. This time we do it to ourselves; and I’m beginning to suspect it’s a sort of hanging chad of childhood excitement where, given enough glitter, twinkly lights, and looped Frank Sinatra hits, we gladly saddle up with the rest of the herd. You wouldn’t think there were eleven other months of the year where we could legally shop for holiday gifts. When summer ends, early autumn merely serves as the elastic in a figurative festive slingshot. We carb-load on Thanksgiving, falling asleep on tryptophan by 7pm, before Black Friday catapults us into the buying frenzy that has only a tiny head start on the twelve days of Christmas. It’s a wonder we don’t skip the partridge part and start at ten lords a’leaping.

It’s not just presents. Once the D-month arrives, we’re suddenly gripped with the need not only to buy festive but also to experience festive. Houses are wired up, trees drip with tiny lights, and we book up our remaining days madly. There are the holiday lights in the park, photo ops with Santa, cookies and gingerbread baking, the ubiquitous pilgrimage to a Nutcracker ballet, and now, (as if watching the movie isn’t enough), scheduling a real live Polar Express train ride. After the steady stream of crafting and cooking that has possessed every week since Hallowe’en, I decided it was fully within my rights to abandon a family trip into the city for the Radio City Christmas show and redefine it as an overnight getaway.

The beauty of train travel into Manhattan is freedom. Freedom to read, snooze, or watch the scenic Hudson River skim by. And freedom to smile indulgently at other people’s children while temporarily unhinged from our own. Having snagged a “quiet” carriage for the ride in, a chatty woman was impaled on daggers thrown by twenty sets of eyes for her heavy cell-phone use. But while the quiet car was busy trying to be quiet, the rest of the train seemed to be jigging around in a fit of excitement, gaggles of children practically mugging outnumbered parent-chaperones for morsels of Doritos and juice.

In town, we tapped into our inner tourist on a wave of city-nostalgia and in twenty-four hours we’d strolled Fifth Ave, pored over window displays, checked out the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, walked in Central Park, dined out and taken in a Broadway show. All while doing battle with the floods of tourists – both foreign and domestic. When the hordes were literally flooding one way there was no choice but to dodge down a cross street and choose a new avenue with a more helpful ebb and flow. At the Majestic Theatre, we stood with a well behaved mob that could easily have stormed the building had it wanted but was was too busy flailing its arms and talking in tongues. ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ – (“New York’s longest running Broadway show!”) clearly still has the power to pull. And the gall to fleece its captive audience. A beer, a soda water, and a packet of M&Ms cost $27. Just try and do the math, it’s fun. We must have smirked because the bartender just shook jazz hands and sang, “It’s Broadway!”

The return train ride was similarly beatific for the two hours of forced relaxation. Sadly, the returning parent-chaperones were anything but relaxed. While the same excited children giggled, squealed, and fought over iPhone games, their frazzled mothers slowly unraveled. One woman was lacing her remonstrations with pretty stiffly worded threats, which sort of detracted from any greater sympathy we may have had. Still, it certainly appeared her 24 hours in the city with three children, had not been restorative. One performance of the Rockettes at Radio City, five meals out, a museum trip, and shopping had left her bereft of Christmas spirit. The children really weren’t too bad but she squawked mercilessly all the way home. And she still has ten shopping days ‘til Christmas.