This is Christmas to Knicks guard Frank Ntilikina: the smell of warm mulled wine and bakery sweets. Fairy lights twinkling throughout the city center. A majestic Christmas tree in Place Kleber. An ice-skating rink at the foot of the cathedral. Small wonder his hometown, Strasbourg, in northeastern France, calls itself the capital of Christmas.

Ntilikina lived five minutes from the city’s popular Christmas market, which has been around since the early 15th century. It’s the place where he drank hot chocolate with high school friends after practice. A place of cobblestone streets lined with hundreds of small wooden stalls with vendors selling crafts and Christmas.

“When you’re in that city, you’re waiting for Christmas time, for the Christmas market,” Ntilikina said. “I wish people can go there and experience it because it’s really special. It’s unbelievable.”

Hold a crystal ornament to the light, and it changes depending on the reflection. For Ntilikina, the Christmas market still evokes the innocence of childhood — but something else, too. On Dec. 11, a gunman opened fire on the crowded open-air market, killing five people and injuring about a dozen others. The suspected gunman died in a shootout with the police two days later.