Stunning Christmas window displays in NYC to see this year

Bergdorf Goodman is back at it with more eye-popping window displays this year all based on the theme “Magic in the Making,” which aims to “draw back the curtain of luxury” to feature the imagination and many skills that go into creating special items, including woodcraft, dress-making, paper sculpture, mosaic, papier-mâché, metal craft and scrapbooking. This year, Sing Harlem helped unveil the windows, which feature a mosaic magician surrounded by a menagerie of colorful animals, monumental wooden birds, and 17th Century paper “artisans.” The windows are a result of 10,000 hours of meticulous work over the course of 10 months.

You can see more of them below:

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Macy’s is bringing back its jolly woodland character Tiptoe, a reindeer who was too shy to fly last year until she learned to believe in herself. This year’s windows celebrate “togetherness” and “festive nostalgia” with Tiptoe as she visits her woodland friends to spread holiday magic and cheer. Each display showcases a different world crafted with core materials, such as gingerbread and flannel.

This year, Bloomingdale’s opened its holiday shopping season and window unveiling with a performance from celebrated singer, actor and performer Billy Porter. The windows this year are meant to embody the “spirit of the season,” with “gift-giving” and “memory-making” as the main themes. Each window has larger-than-life elements including wrapping paper, scissors, champagne glasses, including a toy workshop, a three-dimensional camera featuring images of holiday cards and more.

Get a full look at the windows here:

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The iconic Saks Fifth Avenue holiday light spectacular has undergone a redesign! For the first time ever, dynamic lighting displays are illuminating from within the windows and coordinate with the light show on the building’s facade. With new LEDs and over 600,000 individual points of light, the experience is more colorful, vibrant and immersive than ever before, Saks says. The light show features a holiday medley of Elton John songs including “Step into Christmas,” “Cold Heart PNAU Remix,” “Your Song” and “Merry Christmas.”

Sir Elton John helped unveiled the new display and windows on November 22 with a performance of “Your Song.” Saks also announced it donated $1 million to the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s Rocket Fund, created a curated multi-vendor merchandise collection and dedicated holiday window displays to celebrate. 

The windows themselves were inspired by both the theme of heartwarming holiday gifts from years past and the partnership with the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Inside them are brilliant colors and a nod to nostalgic games with rocket ships and kaleidoscopes, but they are also a celebration of Sir Elton John’s “joyous personality.”

You can see Sir Elton John enjoy the unveiling below:

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This year at the windows at The Greene Space at WNYC and WQXR (44 Charlton), you’ll be able to see an interactive “advent calendar” with animatronics, embedded videos and original music on a handcrafted diorama from over 20 artists who will “convey the delightful, layered, incongruous, kitschy, profound and fraught aspects of this seemingly monolithic holiday.”

WNYC host Brian Lehrer narrates the story set in a snowy hamlet populated by mice at the base of Christmas Mountain, which is topped by an antenna that funnels signals from the “Christmas-sphere” into the town and onto the mice’s TVs. This year, the signal is on the fritz, and one grumpy mouse–the story’s hero–must descend to the center of the mountain to fix it so that the town can fulfill their beloved pastime of watching TV on the Winter Solstice. The clock is ticking! Along the way, our plucky hero encounters adventure at every turn, including a visit to a magical costume shop, a ride with a benevolent bus full of nuns, and broadcasts from an alternate Crust-mas dimension.

It will be on view daily, from December 1 to January 9, with new episodes until December 21.

Nickelodeon is throwing its hat in the game with its own window display featuring diorama-style scenes of characters from shows such as Blue’s Clues & You!, PAW Patrol, Baby Shark’s Big Show!, and Dora the Explorer. You can find them at 1212 Sixth Avenue now through December 25!