Christmas at St. Pancras

While the US gears up for this year's Thanksgiving, here in the UK Christmas baubles sparkle from every commercial surface. The Kings Cross and St. Pancras complex is the overland gateway to Europe and the best known stopover in London.

Visitors step out from the Eurostar trains into a glass-covered terminal dripping with Christmas cheer.  There's a particular flavour to British Christmas decor that stems from the country's pagan roots: a respect for the wild darkness outside the warm houses, an understanding that nature's rhythms still hold control over the most populated cities.

Photo courtesy of St. Pancras International Station

St. Pancras's Christmas tree this year is created by luxury florists Moyses Stevens out of hydrangeas, roses, orchids, and other out-of-season flowers fading from a deep fuchsia at the bottom to pale pink and sparkling snow white at the top. It's a love poem to summer as the winter nights close in, a celebration of all changing seasons, not just one.

The chocolate shop Godiva at St. Pancras celebrates two great British traditions: murder and chocolate. Many British murder mysteries are set during the holidays, where glitter and candles shine in defiance of the darkest weeks of the year.

The British writer Agatha Christie was particularly fond of the 'locked-room' mystery, where a crime is committed in a sealed space, usually a country house in an isolated estate, and no one can leave or enter. Her masterpiece Murder on the Orient Express is in the ultimate enclosed space: a luxury train rushing on a voyage across Europe, a country house in motion.

To celebrate the new film adaptation, Godiva created perfect chocolate models of the Orient Express carriages, accented with edible gold paint and paler milk chocolate pieces. Even the rail tracks and gravel, as well as the lettering, are made of chocolate.

Like Ms. Christie's mysteries, every detail is perfectly crafted and set into place - a great way to ring in the holiday season!