The holidays disturbed but little the even tenor of the Berghof ways. A well-grown fir-tree had been set up a few days beforehand on the right-hand wall of the dining-room, the side wall next the “bad” Russian table; a waft of its fragrance came to the noses of the diners now and then, above the heavy odours of the food, and wakened something like pensiveness in the eyes of a few among the guests seated at the seven tables. When they came to supper on the twenty-fourth, they found the tree gaily decked with tinsel, little glass balls, gilded pine-cones, tiny apples in nets, and varied confections. The coloured wax tapers burned throughout the meal and afterwards. And a tiny, taper-decked tree burned likewise, it was said, in the rooms of the bedridden and moribund⁠—each had his own. The parcel post in the last few days had been very heavy. Joachim Ziemssen and Hans Castorp received carefully packed remembrances from their faraway home, and spread them out in their rooms: judicious gifts of cravats and other articles of clothing, expensive trifles in leather and nickel, and quantities of Christmas cakes, nuts, apples and marzipan⁠—the cousins looked doubtfully at these last supplies, wondering whenever they should have occasion to consume them.