9th Day of Christmas

Longing to stretch out the Christmas holidays just a wee bit more? On the Ninth Day of Christmas, The Arts Muse offers two of her fav yuletide stops.

The first is The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's medieval wing in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan. There you'll find "Christmastide at The Cloisters" from 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. today and Tuesday.

In The Middle Ages, Christmas was not the big deal it is today. (The sights and sounds of the season we know and love were basically 19th-century customs, many of which were brought to England by Queen Victoria's beloved Prince Consort, Albert, who was of German descent.)

Instead, the medieval Christmas was as spare and lovely as a sparkling winter day, with fruited garlands, shafts of wheat and serene chants to deck the Romanesque and Gothic halls, as it were. Experience it for yourself. 212-923-3700, www.metmuseum.org

Those on the go might prefer boarding the "Holiday Train Show" at The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx (through Jan. 10). The city, past and present, is imaginatively recreated in twigs, branches and leaves that cast an amber glow over the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. My favorites are the Chrysler Building and Yankee Stadium, which is not the original Yankee Stadium or New Yankee Stadium but what we might call Yankee Stadium II.

Someday archaeologists may study the various strata of Yankee Stadium the way they do ancient Troy. 212-817-8700, www.nybg.org