Pic of the Week: 30 November 2017

by Pavel Kavalenkau © 2014

A Christmas display in a Bruges (Brugge) shop window.

(If you look carefully, you’ll see in the top left quarter of the picture (just below the “Tax-Free Shopping” sign) that there’s a Father Christmas-type figure, but in beige with green lining rather than the red with white trim that we’re all familiar with these days. Dickens describes the Ghost of Christmas Present as a jolly giant wearing a green robe with fur lining. But it’s an urban myth that the red-and-white colour scheme is the result of Coca-Cola’s marketing – that colouring goes back to at least the 19th century.)