Dail Sketch/Frank McNally: It was the annual turning-on-of-the-lights ceremony, and Leinster House was transformed into a winter wonderland.
The bitterness of the debating chamber was cast aside as smiling politicians of all parties gathered around the gaily-decorated tree, their eyes lit up like characters in a Victorian Christmas card. Underneath them, frost twinkled merrily on the Leinster House lawn.
OK, the transformation was not that dramatic. There was no frost, in fact. Which is just as well, because there's not much lawn either, ever since they turned it into a car-park.
And the tree wasn't all that gaily decorated. It was strung frugally with standard white lightbulbs, as if the Department of Finance was in charge of the decorations, and was stressing the importance of restraint.
Even in an era of cutbacks, though, it was a shock to hear the chairman of the House services committee, John Dennehy TD, declare that, this year, they had another Christmas tree inside "in the fire".
Experts on the Cork accent later clarified the second tree's location as "in the foyer". But suspicions that Charlie McCreevy had taxed the Christmas spirit heightened when the lone piper at the ceremony struck up the popular Negro spiritual "Hard Times".
The mood was underlined by Ceann Comhairle Dr Rory O'Hanlon - the official lighter-upper.
Wearing his medical hat, Dr O'Hanlon said that, contrary to his image, he was not opposed to Christmas drinking, but advised moderation: "One teaspoonful, three times a day, after meals."
Elsewhere in Leinster House, Mr McCreevy was nipping Tom Parlon's yuletide spirit in the bud. Answering questions on decentralisation, he rubbished the Minister of State's claims of influence over the plan: claims Mr Parlon had published in the most famous set of fliers since Rudolph and his friends. News that the PD man had no involvement came as a shock to the Dáil, but for the people of Laois-Offaly, it must have been like hearing Santa Claus did not exist.
If the Minister for Finance had any compliments of the season for his colleague, who was sitting beside him, they were all dubious ones.
Mr Parlon was "quicker off the blocks" than anybody else, said Mr McCreevy. If everyone was "up as early in the morning" as Mr Parlon, the Government would win a landslide every election.
But the bottom line, he added, was that Mr Parlon had nothing to do with the decentralisation decision.
In case anyone was missing the point, Mr McCreevy hammered it home: "I understand from sources close to Leinster House that on the night before the budget was announced, Deputy Parlon happened to fall into certain company in a hostelry not far from here. Someone cottoned on to the fact that something might happen with decentralisation the next day. That was the extent of the Minister of State's knowledge." It was the season of good will, and the PD man smiled accordingly.
But if Mr McCreevy had just placed him on top of the Christmas tree on the lawn, he could not have looked any more uncomfortable.