FOUR SEASONS FRIENDS: Aging Gracefully - A Grown-up's Guide to Santacon

For those of you unfamiliar with NYC's annual SantaCon, it's a massive pub crawl where the participants dress as holiday characters and stumble their way through the city, leaving trails of their costumes and vomit behind. I'll admit that there was a time in my life when I would have enjoyed these festivities, but I'm 32 now and I no longer enjoy binge drinking cheap beer in a crowded bar where drunk Santas spill their beverages on me. I'm simply too old for SantaCon, and while I'm generally okay with that, there's also a small part of me that looks longingly at those very merry 20-somethings. For this reason, I created the "Holiday Sampler" -- it's essentially a more sophisticated bar crawl that includes some of the nicest hotel bars in the city. On the same Saturday as SantaCon, my husband and I were joined by another couple and we hit up the following hotels: The Four Seasons, The King Cole Bar at the St. Regis, the rooftop bar of The Peninsula, The Jade Bar at The Gramercy, and the lounge of the Marlton Hotel. At each location, we ordered some type of seasonal cocktail or champagne while enjoying the beautiful decorations and holiday music. We visited 5 bars in the course of 7 hours (this included travel time) so that we could actually enjoy sipping our cocktails and nibbling on delicious appetizers like the sophisticated adults that we're trying to become. We had a wonderful time -- it was both merry and age appropriate!