Forget public Nativity scenes, as court fiat commanded us to do years ago. On Fifth Avenue this year you can\u2019t even find dear old Santa Claus. Or his elves. Christmas past has become Christmas gone.<\/p>\n
The scenes inside Saks Fifth Avenue\u2019s many windows aren\u2019t easy to describe. Saks calls it \u201cThe Winter Palace.\u201d\u009d I would call it Prelude to an Orgy done in vampire white and amphetamine blue.<\/p>\n
A luxuriating woman lies on a table, her legs in the air. Saks\u2019 executives, who bear responsibility for this travesty, did have the good taste to confine to a side street the display of a passed-out man on his back (at least he\u2019s wearing a tux), spilling his martini, beneath a moose head dripping with pearls. Adeste Gomorrah.<\/p>\n
But you haven\u2019t seen the anti-Christmas yet. It\u2019s up at 59th Street in the \u201choliday\u201d\u009d windows of Bergdorf Goodman. In place of anything Christmas, Bergdorf offers \u201cThe Frosty Taj Mahal,\u201d\u009d a palm-reading fortune teller\u201d\u201dand King Neptune, the pagan Roman god, seated with his concubine. (One Saks window features the Roman Colosseum, the historic site of Christian annihilation.)<\/p>\n