A YEAR on, dolls fill the shelves of a living room and flowers and rainbows decorate a kitchen window next to a little girl’s name: Avielle.

At a glance they seem to have it all: fame, fortune and the sort of beauty most women could only dream of.

Christmas has helped some people in the grieving Connecticut town of Newtown cope a little better with the shooting tragedy that killed 20 schoolchildren, while others have yet to feel the holiday joy.

The massacre of 26 children and adults at an elementary school in the US state of Connecticut elicited horror and soul-searching around the world even as it raised questions about why the gunman, a 20-year-old described as brilliant but remote, would have been driven to such a crime and how he chose his victims, some as young as five.