Heavy snow, in England and Austria, has been disrupting travel. Recent visitors, Kate and Jon, enjoyed an unexpected 24 hours at Stansted airport. The Maria Almers may have been concerned that the Wise Men had been similarly delayed and not reached Jesus by Twelfth Night, so the Christmas decorations and white advent lights, gently illuminating the village and showing the Magi the way, have only just been taken down. We'd had enough of ours a month ago and think the January 6 rule is highly practical. For the sake of integration, we compromised and banished our Christmas tree to the garden with the lights still on it. As I've undoubtedly previously mentioned, traditions here are stringently, perhaps even on pain of public accusation and humiliation, upheld. So you can bet that if they do things a little differently here, it's because that's how it has always been done. Taking the decorations down on Candlemas (February 2) is a tradition that dates back way before the Twelfth Night tradition.
