After Pentecost, Christmas is the most important holiday on the Swiss calendar. The most exciting, too; it is celebrated with many firm handshakes and public performances of organ music.

That's pipe organ music, mind you, not mouth organ music. The Swiss don't really go in for mouth organs very much, as their climate is harsh and their lips are prone to chapping and the use of balm is widely regarded as unseemly.

There is, however, a thriving informal economy among the Swiss for videotapes of mouth-organ performances. Ironically, these contain very little actual music, and have soundtracks consisting largely of human vocal sounds that the Swiss describe as "inside yodeling."

Such videotapes are widely bought, sold, and traded, but only on the underground market, as most of them do not meet Swiss legal standards for production values and lines of video resolution.