In some ways, it feels like I stepped off the plane at JFK from London mere days ago – wide-eyed, naive and still convinced that “winter” would be charming and cozy rather than a six-month endurance test in avoiding frostbite. Yet here I am, somehow entering my sixth year of participating in the annual pageant that is the New York holiday season: that weeks-long spectacle beginning with the first delicate whiff of PSL-something and ending in the far-too-slowly receding hangover on an insultingly arctic New Year’s Day.
The first year, Covid-tinted and therefore emotionally reminiscent of a half-deflated Macy’s parade balloon, was not what one might call festive. But things have really picked up since. My family and I have spent lovely Thanksgivings in Connecticut and in the Hudson Valley; I’ve Haribo-bribed my daughter into silence through joyful performances of The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center; and we’ve been invited to exceptionally fun holiday parties in the Bronx and New Jersey by people who use the phrase “just a quick train ride” with gobsmacking dishonesty.
In short, I’ve come to truly appreciate the way New Yorkers do this time of year: aggressively, competitively, perhaps a touch performatively, but always with the energy of a city that refuses to be out-festived by a single other ZIP code on Earth. It’s because of this appreciation that I’ve tried to keep up. I’ve tried to mimic the enthusiasm, I’ve tried to become a caffeinated, deliriously-determined type-A elf, intent on spreading the holiday spirit whatever the cost.
But also, every December without fail, I find myself uttering the same slightly defeated line: “I guess we should probably see the Rockettes this year…” And every December, equally without fail, we do absolutely nothing of the sort.
It feels like a rite of passage for any aspiring New Yorker – one of those benchmarks of assimilation, like developing an unsolicited opinion on bagel chewiness or pretending your apartment’s “vintage charm” isn’t just peeling paint. Seeing the Rockettes is something you’re supposed to do, and if there was ever a year to cave, it’s this one. It’s their 100th anniversary. Imagine that! A century of sparkle. A hundred years of synchronized legs and seasonal capitalism. And because I am nothing if not committed to understanding the culture I’ve adopted, I decided to learn a little more about the tradition I’d been determinedly avoiding.
So I did some research and what I unearthed, dear reader, was not merely surprising. Hold on to your peppermint mochaccinos – for the Rockettes, those glittering avatars of Manhattan holiday mythology, the high-kicking princesses of the Big Apple… are not, in fact, from New York City. They’re not even from New York State. They’re from St. Louis, Missouri. Yes, the birthplace of toasted ravioli (I’m not knocking it before I’ve tried it and neither should you), Mark Twain and Jon Hamm is, apparently, also the home of the embryonic form of New York’s most aggressively festive institution.
Back in 1925, a choreographer named Russell Markert assembled a group of dancers with legs straight enough to shame a ruler. He christened them the Missouri Rockets, a name that sounds less like a dance troupe and more like a minor-league baseball team. Some 950 miles away, New York then did what it does best: it absorbed them whole, the way a subway grate absorbs hopes, dreams and Apple AirPods still blasting Mariah Carey. It rebranded them, sequined them and inflated them into a cultural monolith luminous enough to be seen from space. By 1932, the Rockettes were headlining at the newly minted Radio City Music Hall and the rest…well, you know the rest.
The more I think about this, the more it makes perfect sense: New York is the world’s most shameless cultural magpie. It adopts everything. Half our bragging rights are imports. The bagel? Eastern European. The Statue of Liberty? French. The hot dog? German. Avocado toast? Australian. New York just imported it, spiritualized it and sold it for $19 as a personality trait. Even the vaunted New York slice – something I like to think of as the communion wafer of intoxicated souls – was born from Neapolitan immigrants who likely did not imagine their culinary legacy being devoured at2 a.m., sloppy mouthfuls punctuated by a chorus of “I’m actually not that drunk.”
Meanwhile, Broadway thrives on British novels, our fashion sense is dictated by Scandinavian minimalists who seem allergic to color and our beloved restaurants are run by chefs who came from faraway lands, took one look at the rent here and immediately doubled the price of their pasta.
That’s the real magic of New York. It does not demand originality. It’s a giant, unhinged cultural compost heap. It takes raw ingredients – sagas, traditions, dancers from Missouri – and catalyzes them into something louder, shinier and harder to look away from. For years I believed this city’s glory came from its native-born lore – things that sprouted organically from the five boroughs like fire escapes, bodegas and big egos. But I now think the opposite is true. New York’s extraordinary power lies in its ability to take whatever glides into its gravitational field, slap some New Yorkness on it and declare it iconic.
The Rockettes are the city’s adopted daughters: the high-kicking embodiment of the city’s most persistent truth: that you don’t need to be born here to become a New Yorker. You just need to show up, do something that anyone not living here would describe as either irresponsible, brave or outrageous, and let the city do the rest.
And just like the Rockettes, if you’re lucky, you might even find yourself part of the spectacle. Not because you were born for it, but because New York, audaciously unapologetic and so damn irresistible, decided it wanted to cast you in a role you quite possibly never even dared dream of.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 22, 2025 World edition.
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