Merry Christmas!

The Christmas decorations are looking quite a bit like last year's decorations, so I looked around for some that I had not seen last year.  The most creative tree goes to the Leonardo restaurant in Polonezkoy, who turned their chandelier into a decorated tree.

The candy shops are all nicely decorated for Christmas.  Here is one of the Divan shops, ...

 one of the Baylan shops made a tree out of their colored macaroons, ...

 and Cafer Erol has a red and white candy cane ring tree.  And the flavor is, ... no, not peppermint, but cherry!

Almost all of the trees are artificial, but I did find two very much alive trees at the Kanyon shopping center.  The girls inside even posed for me after giving treats from their red bag to children!

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas ? Trees

Istanbul is decorated with lots of Christmas trees. The city is responsible for the trees of white airy balls entwined with lights. In the foreground, a vendor is roasting chestnuts. A high end shopping mall has a tree made of artificial poinsettias, with unwrapped packages from the mall shops underneath to maximize advertising.

A stationary store has plastic trees, stocking and ornaments for sale. All made in China.

And live Charlie Brown trees are now available for home use and subsequent planting. Many people will have a tree in their home, although the celebration here is really for New Year's, not Christmas. As it turns out, Santa comes here on New Year's Eve and delivers packages to the children. So if you thought Santa rested after Christmas, you are wrong. He's busy delivering to Turkey on New Year's Eve.

I picked up a Turkish copy of Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol" (left) for my collector friend Nick. The shop also had an abridged version for younger children (right), the title of which has been changed to "A New Year's Day Story". The original ends with Tiny Tim saying, " God protect all of us, each one of us. Amen." and in the modified version, Tiny Tim says, "Have a merry and happy Christmas." I'll leave the rest of the translation comparisons to Nick.

At my own home, my Christmas tree is a candle taper - a minimalist year for decorations.

Have a very Merry Christmas!