GABRIELLA Kovac has a memory of a Christmas which defined the season as a time of magic.
It was 1956, the year of the Hungarian revolution and its subsequent defeat by Soviet Russia.
The archbishop of Hungary was in prison and all things religious were banned.
That Christmas Gabriella's mother Georgina bought a huge Christmas tree and placed it in front of a bay window in their second floor apartment in Budapest.
The tree was decorated and lit up and the family went for a walk while the "angel" delivered the presents.
"It was one of the best memories in my life — being outside in the snow and looking up at our window with the lit up tree," Gabriella said.
"It was an act of defiance but no one said anything — I always wondered how my mother had so much guts."
The fact that Gabriella's family were Jewish made the occasion even more magical.
"My mother believed in magic and that God was everywhere and in everything that was good," she said.
For Gabriella, 67, Christmas spirit is connected to her mother's spirit.
She has written a book to preserve her mother's extraordinary courage and will to survive: Georgina — My Mother's Story.
The book was first launched at the Jewish Museum in December last year and has since been published as an e-book on Amazon, where it is doing very well.
Gabriella, formerly of Como and Kareela, is now on the author talk circuit and spoke at Kogarah Library before Christmas.
By Gabriella's account, Georgina, who died 10 years ago, was an extraordinary woman who never let obstacles get in her way.
A well-paid restorer of rare Persian carpets, the Jewish Georgina would have been shipped off to Nazi death camps but for the fact that she was able to procure an Aryan person passport. She also dyed her hair blonde.
"She survived World War II because she was smart," Gabriella said.
"And under communism she couldn't work but she found a way to make money by starting a cottage industry."
Georgina designed scarves and employed women with looms to weave them for her. Then she found a way to screenprint "white dots on to black fabric" creating another fashion scarf.
Despite — or because of — the Soviet austerity, people with a few extra coins went out of their way to buy the luxury items.
With the money she made Georgina was able to talk government officials into 12 travel visas so the whole extended family could migrate to Australia.
"She said she did not want to live in a country where they kill each other every 10 years," Gabriella said.
In Sydney Georgina managed a factory for a big fashion house and eventually started her own business. Gabriella also went into the fashion business, becoming a designer.
"She kept reinventing herself and always landed on her feet — she used the say the streets were paved with gold and all you have to know is how to pick it up," Gabriella said.
"The lesson that she passed on was that you can always start again regardless how dark things become.
"As long as you believe, as long as you never give up; you can free yourself from that which oppresses you and live a successful and happy life."
Keen to pass on her mother's belief in magic, Gabriella has written a book for her two grandsons and is looking forward to reading it to them on Christmas day, under the Christmas tree.
Bobelee and Boboya: Now You See It, Now You Don't, illustrated by Pricilia Anugrah, is about two naughty elves that only children and cats can see.
