Even when I was a kid, Christmas was an exotic time. A magic of scents, tastes, and a certainty that anything was possible :
Christmas
heavy dark seeded bread
brown bottled beer you can’t see through
dry sharp salami
lumps of malachite shaped into eggs
glass beads ready for stringing
sheets of tin
strands of copper
damp dark tobacco wrapped with yellow paper
messages from gypsy horsemen distant relative to our mother