20051221

Christmas shopper sees red at star in the east

Stars may seem like a harmless symbol of Christmas goodwill -- but in eastern Europe, if they're red, they may be anything but.

Hungarian shopper Istvan Hamza made a formal complaint to police that the star decorations in a record shop in the town of Szombathely were too much like the communist red star -- banned by law as a symbol of decades of dictatorship.

But the police let Christmas charity prevail.

"The shop's red stars are an irregular shape and their branches are not pointed but rounded, so they do not meet the specification set out in the law," spokesman Peter Kovacs said Monday, according to the local news agency MTI.

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