Merry Christmas

Above is our Christmas Tree. It is fairly a feet tall, and is an alive pine. It's seed started growing in our garden and this is his first year as a Christmas tree.

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In the previous years, we used to have another, a larger specimen in the same container, but that one has outgrown her confinement. Each year we invited the tree into our barely-heated veranda. And she did reside there between 24 December and 6 January. But she became large and we had to give her away.

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Now we have this small one, so we decided to decorate the veranda and the container instead. But we do have some decorations on the tree itself.

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In Hungary, Christmas trees are usually set up on 24 December. Most people buy cut trees from street vendors. Some people buy trees in containers and there used to be a movement to tree-recycling, when people gave the tree back after the holidays, but unfortunately, it proved unsuccessful.

Most people keep the tree until mid-January. We, in respect of the living organism, relocate the tree back into the cold once the 'season' is over.

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In our family we decorate the tree together. It is a family activity, when everyone focuses on the tree and on making the room as nice as possible. Most decorations are angel/Jesus/star/plant/fairy-related. Most of our decorations are made of natural materials.

We prepare the room before noon, and decorate the tree after a hearty Christmas lunch. When it's ready, but not before the light starts to fade, we go for a walk.

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There's a Catholic church nearby with a short show called 'Betlehem'. Kids and adults join and re-play the story of the birth of Jesus. Small girls play angels, somewhat older kids play the shepherds and so on. There are animals involved as well. During the play, people can sing the songs along with the amateur actors. These are Catholic songs and folk songs as well.

We are not Catholics and our kids are well aware of that.

We watch the show because it is a good opportunity to walk away from home so that the angels can put the presents under the tree. But also the show is nice and peaceful. There are not really many people there, this year there were about a hundred. There are always friends there so that we can have some small season's talk with them. Everyone looks peaceful and seems to be expecting the evening and seems to be absorbed by the feeling of Christmas. The Curch is located at the very edge of the town, and there are many trees around.
When the show is over, we walk home and voilá - the presents are there, under the tree!

It's magic.

My kids are 11 and 8 and they still believe in the magic of angels.

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This is what we did today - we built a house :