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What's the price tag on a Merry Christmas? Very high indeed, if you look at the Czech Republic. The shopping frenzy is in full swing - and once again Czechs are spending more than they can afford.

Investigators have come to the conclusion that no one can be held responsible for last December's fall of a 30-metre Christmas tree, which left five people injured. The tree crushed to the ground on Prague's Old Town square after a strong gust of wind snapped it at its base. One of the people injured, a 54-year old British tourist, is now in a wheel chair after suffering fractures to both femurs and the spine. A Prague police spokesperson said on Monday that the tree snapped because it was made of bad wood and not because it was not stabilised properly.

Looking for a Superstar! Thousands of young Czechs are lining up to show that they have what it takes. The Czech who's been making the same resolution for 13 years now and is still determined to see it through. And, traditional New Years greetings cards are replaced by SMS messages. Find out more in this weeks Magazine with Daniela Lazarova.

Some of you might remember a programme a few months back about a very unusual composer called Vaclav Halek, who has composed more than 2,000 pieces of music based on the "song" of the wild mushroom. Well Mr Halek also composes and arranges Christmas carols, and not just Czech carols, but Christmas music from all over the world. Rob Cameron went to meet him.

Since Czechs celebrate Christmas on the 24th, Tuesday's papers are the last to come out before the Christmas holidays and all of them are brightly garbed and bearing the annual message of goodwill. Mlada Fronta Dnes has covered its front page with infants - the offspring of eight famous couples. Pravo has last minute advice for parents: spinning tops and stinking plastic figures known as "stinkers" are the hottest presents for kids this year.

Although all the main dailies lead with different stories today, they all feature the same photo of Czech cross-country skier Katerina Neumannova hugging her baby after winning a competition in Austria just five months after giving birth.

Most of us are freezing cold here in Central Europe but some Czechs are looking forward to a New Years' dip in the Vltava river, the Czech and Slovak prime ministers race each other across the Czech-Slovak border and the light of Bethlehem has arrived in the Czech Republic. As every year you can also find it at the Czech Radio building here in Prague. Find out more in this weeks Magazine with Daniela Lazarova

Christmas is just days away, and it would be obtuse of me if I wrote this Letter from Prague about anything else. To be honest I find Christmas has little to recommend it: as an atheist it has no religious significance, I'm too old to get excited about unwrapping presents - a major downside of adulthood, and I don't have kids so I can't enjoy their fun either. So usually I find the holiday usually passes in a blur of mild indigestion and mind-numbing vegetation in front of the TV. This year, I expect, will be no exception.

The Czech Statistics Agency has just produced a report about what traditions people still observe at Christmas time, how many of them eat fried carp as their main Christmas dish, how many sing Christmas carols and how many bake their own Christmas cookies. But in order to give you the whole picture I asked Lenka Slivova, one of the agency's employees, to simply tell us what her own Christmas is like:

In just over a week's time many thousands of people in the Czech Republic will leave the warmth of their homes on Christmas Eve to attend midnight mass. The tradition remains strong in this country, despite the fact that some surveys suggest the Czechs are among the most atheistic nations in Europe. To find out how religious the Czechs really are as a nation, I spoke to Jesuit priest and academic Josef Blaha.