Christmas Novena Begins Today

Today is the first day of Christmas Novena making this is the official start date of the Christmas season for many Colombians. These nine days of Christmas are filled with prayer and celebrations for the families. The houses and cities are decorated with el pesebre (nativity scenes) which are made or plastic or hand crafted figurines. The nativity scene is setup sans the baby Jesus, which is added to the scene on Christmas Eve.

Christmas trees are put up and decorated very similarly to Christmas trees in the United States, with bows, lights and ornaments. They of course have their share of "unique" decorated Christmas trees as well. Here's a picture of a Christmas tree in Bogotá decorated by a cheese company.