By Scott Burns
Photography by Patti Bose

When it starts to cool and people talk of Christmas, there is only one place you will find me. Santa Fe, New Mexico. It has been this way for years. There are no options on the table. Our car knows the way. The CDs of Christmas music are ready. Somewhere between the cities of Tucumcari and Cline’s Corners, my heart lightens. And as we go over the lonely railroad track to Lamy, well, I might even start to sing.

Christmas in Santa Fe!

Is it the scent of piñon? Is it the crystal clear night skies? Is it the farolitos whose glow outlines every building downtown? Is it the choice of red chili or green? Is it the anomalous bronze sculpture of leaves and branches on Airport Road that’s really a bus stop? Is it steaming naked in a hot tub, watching snow fall? Is it the iconic figures of animals and people, the intense re-creation of the living world that all the artists bring to Santa Fe? Is it rum toddies on Christmas Eve and the Eastside walk with blazing luminarias?

I still don’t know.

And let me confess: For many years, I have simply enjoyed it. My only concern is to pile up as much of this experience as possible and to share it with as many of my friends and family as I can. I commend this approach to you. Go to Santa Fe. Go for Christmas. Just be there.

For me, Santa Fe is a place of connection, mystery, and history. Lawrence Durrell had his Alexandria — mysterious, sensate, unknowable. I have my Santa Fe — intimate, deeply different, suffused with loving-kindness.

The City Different, as Santa Fe is nicknamed, is different.

Christmas trees are rare; though there are enough of them that no one will feel uncomfortable. Yes, there are wreaths and ristra. There are lights in windows. But images of Santa Claus, Saint Nick, and sleds loaded with gifts are nearly absent. So is the Grinch.

Founded in 1607 — 13 years before the founding of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts —- Santa Fe has more history than any place in America. It might also be the best way to visit another country while staying within the borders of the continental United States. With that sense of place, Christmas in Santa Fe becomes a deeper time. And we owe its warmth, I’ve learned, to the humble Juan Diego who lived nearly 500 years ago. He was a peasant near Mexico City in 1531, scarcely a dozen years after Cortez defeated the Aztecs and during the same period that a dozen Franciscan monks (the most gentle of all the orders) came to convert the natives to Christianity.

As the story is told, in early December 1531, Juan Diego had a vision. The Lady. She asked that a temple be built in her honor. When Juan Diego repeated the Lady’s message, the Bishop asked him for a convincing sign. Some days later, on Dec. 12, Juan Diego saw the Lady again. She told him to climb a hill and return with the flowers he would find there. At the top of the hill, Juan Diego found beautiful Castilian roses, although everything else was frozen. He wrapped them in his cloak and took them to the Bishop. When the roses were removed from his cloak, there was a second sign — a perfect image of the Lady was impressed into the cloak. The Virgin of Guadalupe became the most powerful and most repeated image of Mexican Catholicism.

Thus, in Santa Fe, as in old Mexico, the celebration of Christmas begins on Dec. 12 in remembrance of Juan Diego’s vision and continues over the nine nights of Las Posadas leading to Christmas Day. Mary and Joseph’s search for an inn is re-enacted in the Plaza on the day before Christmas. In addition, there are ceremonial dances and celebrations in the Indian pueblos north and south of Santa Fe. Attend just one and you have crossed a portal to another world. This is the world of the Winter Solstice, the period when different cultures celebrate the possibility of renewal and rebirth, knowing the shortest and darkest days would inevitably give way to sustaining, nurturing spring.

This is not the world most of us live in today, with e-mail and imperious to-do lists. This is a world in which nature demands humility. Personally, I am grateful for the reminder.

Now, here are some of my favorite things about Christmas in Santa Fe. …

WHERE TO STAY
No one complains about a lack of places to stay in this town. Santa Fe has an abundance of hotels, motels, and bed-and-breakfasts. It also has a large inventory of short-term rentals ranging from quaint little casitas to haciendas fit for a 100-year family reunion. But, if you’re a first-time visitor, make your life easy: Park the car.

Stay within walking distance of the Plaza. You’ll avoid the hassle of parking, get a little exercise, be able to amble at your leisure, and enjoy the subtle intoxication of piñon.

My favorite is La Posada de Santa Fe Resort & Spa, a two-block walk from the Plaza and a nice stroll to the art galleries on Canyon Road. Expanded and refurbished in the last eight years, the hotel is centered on historic Staab House and a complex of adobe accommodations ranging from rooms to handsome suites. Virtually all have kiva fireplaces and a generous supply of firewood. The grounds are lovely and well tended, the restaurant Fuego is romantic and top-notch, and there is a nice Victorian bar with two fireplaced sitting rooms. And what if La Posada is full? You might try the Inn of the Anasazi, which boasts another fine restaurant, and you’ll be only a few steps from the Plaza.

WHERE TO EAT
Sorry, you will not be allowed to leave Santa Fe unless you have lunch or dinner at Geronimo, my candidate for best restaurant in the universe. Failing to attend will result in a black mark on your permanent record. The restaurant is beautifully done in neutrals and lit by candles, and everything on the menu is memorable, discretely served and exquisitely presented. My wife and I also like the bar at Geronimo, a tiny room with no more than six stools, a handful of tables, and a cozy fireplace. Instead of having dinner, we order a bottle of champagne and graze the appetizer menu.

HANGING OUT
A funny little place at the corner of Garcia and Acequia Madre (a deeply trendy Eastside location), Downtown Subscription is a great place to stop if you’re intent on walking the neighborhood — which everyone should. You’re a block from the Nedra Matteucci Galleries and its spectacular sculpture garden. Garcia Street Books, my favorite small bookstore in Santa Fe, is next door. You won’t find anyone in Downtown Subscriptions’ large courtyard garden in December, but remember it for your return for Indian Market in August.

NIGHTLIFE
Whatever the season, Santa Fe has plenty of nightlife, casual and cultural. Pianist Doug Montgomery performs at Vanessie of Santa Fe and regularly encourages audience participation. During the summer, this can mean singers from the Santa Fe Opera, so the performance level can be stunning. And at Christmas, well, you never know who’s in town.

The Dragon Room, an extension of the late Rosalea Murphy’s Pink Adobe restaurant, has live music on weekend nights and her corner table is still marked "Reserved." My suggestion: Don’t just drink the margaritas. Have some Gypsy Stew or some of their apple pie with hard sauce, too.

If you’re looking for a raucous time, head for El Farol on Canyon Road. The restaurant serves tapas. But later in the night, the tiny bar is wall-to-wall band, celebrants, and dancing. I like to visit El Farol with my son, stepson, and son-in-law so we can do tequila shooters and embarrass each other. El Farol may be the only bar in the world immortalized by a genetic algorithm.

Santa Fe is a great place for music and everyone but the Santa Fe Opera is performing at Christmas. My advice: Check the Web sites for the Santa Fe Pro Musica, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival before leaving home. Make your selections (and ticket purchases) in advance. My personal favorite is chamber music played in the Chapel at Loretto, the one with the legendary "Miraculous Staircase."

SMALL EXPEDITIONS
• Ten Thousand Waves, a Santa Fe institution modeled on a Japanese bathhouse, is a "must do." Regular visitors to Santa Fe call ahead to make reservations, go directly from the plane to Ten Thousand Waves, and emerge well mellowed and nearly unable to talk about what they do for a living. Years ago, a friend who has a house at Vista Redonda, overlooking Black Mesa and the rest of forever, opined, "You know it doesn’t get any better when you’ve got the number to Ten Thousand Waves on the auto-dialer of your car phone." At Ten Thousand Waves, you can rent private hot tubs and arrange for a variety of massages and treatments. You also can, as most of the locals do, elect to use the public men’s or women’s hot tubs, clothing optional.

• Drive out Bishop’s Lodge Road to the winding, hobbit-land hideouts of Tesuque, New Mexico, and pull into the Shidoni Foundry, located at the back of a long sculpture garden. Visit on a Saturday, the day the foundry is open to the public, and you can watch as new bronzes are cast after you’ve listened to an artist/guide explain the process of lost wax casting. When you leave, stop in the Tesuque Village Market, have some of their green chili stew, and then check out their enormous stock of rare tequilas.

• Drive to Museum Hill, not far out of town, and visit the Museum of International Folk Art, one of the most charming museums in the world. Its main exhibit is devoted to a 125,000-piece collection of folk art and reveals, once again, the universal urge to re-create and pay homage to the joys of daily life.
"Ready Money" columnist Scott Burns spends every Christmas in Santa Fe and says that, somehow, the joys of daily life are all closer in the City Different.

ONLY IN SANTA FE
If you look around, our world has become almost entirely alphanumeric. Over the last 50 years, the Texaco flying horse disappeared, replaced by type. So did virtually every other corporate creature. Typography annihilated animism and nature.

Here, animism abounds. Indeed, rather than being immediately immersed in it, you’d do well to watch a few Joseph Campbell tapes and flex your Inner Jungian before starting for the City Different. If this strikes you as perplexing, don’t worry. You’re not alone. One indication is the constant re-ordering of a single book at the Santa Fe Borders store, Riane Eisler’s The Chalice & the Blade. I had to visit the store four times before finding it in stock because it had always just sold out.

First published in 1988 and now in its 25th edition with more than 500,000 copies sold, the book reinterprets ancient history and shows the world being run over by a "dominator" model of civilization — but opens the door to a feminine model, a goddess world based on partnership rather than strife and conquest. Perhaps that’s why the Virgin of Guadalupe is the guiding image in Santa Fe. The goddess is trying to re-emerge. A best-selling novel, The Da Vinci Code, pursues the same theme.

Here’s some contemporary supporting evidence. When President George W. Bush visited Santa Fe this spring, the Santa Fe New Mexican featured a story in which the sheriff advised protestors they could avoid the chaos, confusion, and possible danger of any planned anti-war protest by calling the sheriff’s office. The sheriff would gladly help them set a time, at the protestors’ convenience, when they could come downtown and be arrested. There will be no Chicago Seven in Santa Fe. — Scott Burns