Twenty years ago, as Romanians were celebrating their first free holiday in decades, they rejoiced at the news that dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena had been shot dead on Christmas day. It was the ultimate proof that the communist regime had crumbled irrevocably and that the late-December revolution had indeed succeeded.
But every Christmas since has brought a feeling of uneasiness — even anger at times — at how the Ceausescus were handled during their final days, after being apprehended in the small town Targoviste. Especially on this anniversary year, as the country closely revisits the events of eastern Europe's only bloody 1989 revolution, Romanians vehemently contest the Ceausescus' execution, which followed a one-and-a-half hour kangaroo-trial.
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