Beginning To Look A Lot Like...

Here in Tunisia, since the country is 99% Muslim, they don't really celebrate Christmas. But our Christian holiday lines up nicely with their New Year's celebration, so they can decorate festively.

I mentioned that The Golden Tulip Hotel had some glamorous decorations and the next day when I stepped down into the lobby of Hotel Les Berges du Lac - Concorde, my home away from home, the decorations were UP! The color scheme of the hotel's decor is purple and silver. DH has admired it excessively. The first picture is the hall table and mirror that sits right at the base of the stairs. This was my first flash that something was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

The tree in the lobby is not as big as the one at The Golden Tulip. You have no sense of scale here, and the trees are a little scrubby, but this tree is about one third of the size of the big one at the other hotel. At first, they had it in the center of the lobby by the front desk. It had a big white fluffy skirt and a bunch of shiny purple wrapped 'gifts' as decorations around the bottom of it. When we left for dinner last night, there were a couple of kids picking up all the boxes, shaking them and trying to tear the paper off of them. When we returned from dinner, the tree had been moved.

This morning, I was glad to see it erected at the edge of the lobby area, but you can see that the bottom is just wrapped up in the white stuff and no attempt to repeat the gifts at the bottom has been made.

The tree is decorated with fairies instead of angels. I'm sure there's some deeply philosophical reason why that was preferable for this Muslim run hotel; however, I find I can squint my eyes and imagine them as angels.
The other prevalent decoration is shiny silver mesh bags of Jordan almonds. I'm nearer the land of Jordan than I've ever been in my life, so this shouldn't surprise me. I find the overall affect of the tree to be very Merry, indeed.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in my home now.

The front desk has a lovely ornament made by layering those round mirrors and layers of ball ornaments. It's a beautiful touch for the Carrerra marble front desk. Notice the heart shaped ornament placed on top. Not the traditional thing for a Christmas decoration, but I can see how a sparkly purple heart would make this arrangement.
By the front entrance, there's a smaller tree decorated in the same color scheme. It's got a lot of white lights on it and they flash on and off, getting progressively more and more lit. So it starts off flashing a few, then it doubles, then triples, until all the lights flash. Then it starts over again. I found myself just staring at the sparkling lights. I wonder how long those gifts will last under this smaller tree before some kid starts bouncing them around and tearing off the foil?

They've made an effort to decorate the whole place. In the bar, where no alcohol is served, each small table has a candle centerpiece that ties in with the lobby decor.

I'm very impressed with all the decorations. The person who takes care of the lobby floral arrangements obviously did the whole presentation. Every place that usually sports some kind of flower arrangement now has a 'Christmassy' one in its stead. All shiny. Lots of purple. Not a Santa in sight. No Star of Bethlehem, no creche. No red and green. But I'll take what I can get when it comes to Holiday Cheer. This has elevated my mood. Now, I need to sit in the lobby and see if they've got any holiday music playing. Because I'm pretty tired of that one Alicia Keyes CD they are wearing out.

--Sandee Wagner