“After some time I was released to visit Norway for about three months, and than it happened, that I the following christmas holidays in the East was married and had a homelike life. Sometimes we celebrated christmas in Tientsin, others in Kalgan, Urga and once in Fengeheng in Norhtern Shansi, but whereever we were, christmas came with family and everything belonging to the holidays, just as it should be. It was often difficult to produce a christmas tree, but we never came into such need for a tree that we would have to decorate a broom, no, the lowest we ever got was a pot grown Thuja. Those were wonderful christmas eves, though I travelled for most of the year, I always came home for christmas, whatever the cost might be. Well, one year I did not make it, and had to sit still up here. The last christmas eves have neither been what you can call homelike, as they have been spent on hotels, which can never be compared to the christmas, that can be spent in the poorest hut.”

 Oscar Mamen has been divorced from Karen for three years now. Christmas in 1927 he will spend alone: