Disasters strike at any time.
But they hit home hardest at this time of year. Glasgow has suffered at Christmas before.
This time last year the city was still coming to terms with Clutha, when a police helicopter dropped on to a busy music bar.
Nine died that night, November 29, 2013; another in hospital later.
Like George Square, the Clutha Bar was a place most Glaswegians knew well. Like George Square, it was a place many loved.
The same could be said of Ibrox.
It was at the Rangers ground - scene of so many astonishing sporting memories - that Glasgow suffered its worst holiday disaster in living memory.
Here, on January 2, 1971, sixty-six fans died, most of chest compression, and another 200 were injured in a horrific crush.
Clutha, George Square, Ibrox all touched us all because those who died were doing something so ordinary at Christmas: listening to a band, shopping, watching football.
But seasonal tragedies don't have to involve huge loss of life. Take the deaths of Mhairi Convy, 18, and Laura Stewart, 20.
The two students were walking in Glasgow's North Hanover Street on December 17, 2010, when a Range Rover mounted the pavement and hit them.
The driver, William Payne, had blacked out. It wasn't the first time.
A sheriff later described Mr Payne's response to the subsequent police inquiry as "less than entirely frank, self-serving and lacking in credibility".
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