Conscious of the great fun our friends are having with Christmas, American Jews fill the gap with eight nights of presents, glittering decorations, and in some homes, Christmas trees beside the hanukkiyah as a vehicle for even more presents.
For them, these byelections present a glittering opportunity to pressure a reluctant Ed Miliband into a set of "Ukip lite" policies on race, migration etc.
Whilst Wolf Hall, Bring Up The Bodies, The Tudors and The Boleyn Girls present the glittering – though at times terrifying – world of the Tudor court on TV and in literature, a new BBC Four film looks at what life was like for ordinary Tudor people.
All told, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire presents a glittering panoply of decadence, folly, farce and devastation.
But to the present and the glittering tree at hand.
His observations laid the foundation for the Big Bang theory of how the universe began and has evolved to its glittering present, and how it may end.
Both cities encompass the best elements of Russia's turbulent past and glittering present.
By dwelling on the glittering present and the entertainingly uncertain future, Trump erases all sense of history, context and accountability for his own life and actions.
The Lemur, Banville/Black's latest, forsakes the pathologist Quirke and his seedy postwar Dublin for John Glass, a once-celebrated journalist now married to money and idling in a glittering present-day Manhattan.
It did open then, a big and glittering Christmas present for the Edwardian city.
