There’s a very good chance we won’t get to any German nor Belgian Christmas markets this year, the first time for this to happen since I moved here. It’s also likely all we’ll see are the commercial markets in local garden centers, which are luckily above expectations but not at all at par with the real thing, and with due respect to actual Dutch Christmas markets, if any were to actually push through this year, are just not that merry almost bordering on regrettable.
After visiting two garden centers – which five weeks before Christmas have already started selling pine trees(!) – I gave in to the call and started our interior decorating for this season. This year’s tree I can wait another two weeks for but the window in our living room needed a lift and I was raring to get it done.

The theme for the season is wood and gold, a combination that’s not only striking but has already started to lift me up in so many ways – any therapy to beat the misery we’re all going through right now is a gift. For the first time I bought some beautiful pine branches and spread them all around our flat adding on a few items we’d accumulated over the years, and with the colder than usual weather lately it’s almost as if it could be any other past Yule season. The spirit is more than willing this year.