In the Community Free Space Shop, this afternoon, different community groups were decorating 20 real Christmas Trees.

The Christmas Tree Festival will run from 12th – 21st December, 10-4. You can vote for your favourite tree for £1.00.

There will also be craft sessions, and wreath making sessions. This particular tree had decorations made and painted by people with learning disabilities supported by hft.

Tracey from Carers Oxfordshire helped co-ordinate the event. She also organises Abingdon Community Events’ Toydrive and has been collecting gifts over the last few weeks. Their big wrap will be on 14th December at Dalton Barrack Community Centre. See facebook @abingdonevents.

The Nativity Scene in the porch of St Nicolas Church, Abingdon, is back again this year.

The scene shows the birth of Jesus as told in St Luke’s Gospel where an angel told shepherds of the birth of a baby, who would be a Saviour. The shepherds visited Jesus and found him lying in a manger – a cattle feeding trough. This account is combined with the account from St Matthew’s Gospel which tells of wise men who follow a star to the place where Jesus lives.

Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scene in 1223 at Greccio, central Italy. His scene combined the two accounts and added an Ox and Ass. Such scenes then became very popular, and are still very popular to this day, particularly around Christmas.

St Nicolas is another character who is celebrated at Christmas, although he is better known as Santa Claus.

Christmas is over for another year and people who got real Christmas Trees took them to the Market Place in Abingdon today.

Staff from Abingdon-on-Thames Town Council were recycling Christmas Trees for free. That is much better than nearby Henley Town Council where the Parks Team charge £2 a tree.

At Preston Road Community Centre decorations were taken off the Christmas Trees before they were put back in their boxes.

It was Twelfth Night today (5th January) and the lights did not come on in the town centre (apart from the ones in Bury Street).

Snow was falling soon after midnight on Christmas Day Morning outside The Punchbowl in Abingdon.

Santa was passing through at about that time.

Happy Christmas. Ho Ho Ho! It was fake snow.