Christmas, Halloween, New Years.. Who doesn’t love marking a holiday with a special episode of their favourite show? There are some amazing festive options from classics like Gossip Girl, Orange Is The New Black, New Girl, and Friends. But have you ever noticed that there's no such thing as holidays in the Sex And The City universe?
Think about it carefully. In six seasons, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda are never seen celebrating (or hating) V-day. Yes, in the movie Miranda does question: 'Is it me or is Valentine's Day this year on steroids?' but not a single episode of the original show actually features the love fest.
Now, think harder. Do the women ever celebrate Thanksgiving (after all, they are in America)? Halloween? Christmas? Nope. Not one of these annual landmarks are covered.
Why are there no Christmas episodes of Sex and The City?
There seem to be several possibilities. When you think about it carefully, going through every episode, it becomes clear that Sex and the City predominantly takes place in the summer. There are occasional references to events that signify it being spring – such as Fleet Week – and Carrie points out that autumn is approaching once or twice.
Winter is mentioned occasionally, and it clearly holds New York in its icy grip in parts of Season 6 (Carrie and Aleksandr take a sleigh through the park, and it is snowing during the ill-fated party in Splat).
Yet summer is clearly where the majority of the show’s action unfurls, enabling our heroine to walk the streets of Manhattan in some amazing ensembles, no coat necessary. Even then, it’s remarkably vague: months are very rarely specified, and where they are, it’s usually July. Weird, right?
Maybe, when you are exploring the life and loves of a group of four women as deeply as Darren Star did, you don’t necessarily have the time to pause from the action to see what Carrie got in her Christmas (Manolos, obviously).
Maybe a Halloween episode was seen as gimmicky or cliché, so was purposely avoided. Or perhaps, and most realistically, it came down to the airing schedules that the writers were working toward.
All seasons aired from June of the year in which they debuted, mostly running until September or early October, so the episodes' timelines - mainly the focus on summer - echoed the real lives of the viewers. Season 4 and 6 both took airing breaks, with their second parts returning in the winter. This explains the glimpses of snow and references to cold in Season 6, rarely seen before.
The reasoning, then, makes perfect sense! And we like the long-term result: however accidental, by removing the calendar clues to Carrie and her friends’ adventures, the show becomes slightly more timeless. You can watch any episode, at any time, without needing to know how many months Carrie has been sniffing around Big and vice versa. It places Ms Bradshaw into a New York bubble of her own making. We don’t need to know what else is going on in the world - and she certainly doesn't understand international politics - because in Carrie’s world, time is unimportant. What matters is love, friendship and couture.
Naturally, this theory goes out the window for the less neatly structured film, which does drop in Halloween, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day in a bid to hammer home just how long Carrie swooned over her fleeing groom. When you only have two hours to play with, it makes sense.
But still, next time you watch the film, remember that the Louis Vuitton handbag Carrie gives Louise from St Louis may just be the first Christmas present she’s ever given.
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