Christmas eve: Did you mean...?

The Christmas holiday has gathered around it customs and traditions for over two millennia, some of which even pre-date the Christian festival itself. From gift-giving to the sumptuous spread of a Christmas dinner table...

The way Queen Victoria (reign 1837-1901) and her family celebrated their Christmases became familiar to the public over the years, thanks to the intense media coverage of...

How we celebrate Christmas today is largely shaped by a small group of authors who recorded festive traditions in the 19th century. These authors include Washington Irving (1783-1859), Clement Clarke...

The Christmas Truce of 1914 occurred on the Western Front during the First World War (1914-18). On Christmas Eve soldiers in the trenches spontaneously agreed to a ceasefire. Beginning with...

Printed Christmas cards became popular in the Victorian period (1837-1901) thanks to a combination of cheaper printing techniques and even cheaper post, with the arrival of the Penny Black postage stamp. Coming in all...

Christmas carols are a much-loved part of the Christmas season and while many have a long history, others are surprisingly recent. From medieval dancing songs to the 19th-century revival, the words and music of carols...

Christmas was one of the highlights of the medieval calendar, not only for the rich but also for the peasantry. For the longest holiday of the year, typically the full twelve days of Christmas, people stopped work, homes were...

An 1880 coloured lithograph titled Christmas Eve by J. Hoover. (Library of Congress)

The Garden of Eden is the biblical earthly paradise created by God to be inhabited by his first human creation - Adam and Eve. Some claim that the name “Eden” derives from the Akkadian term edinu, which means 'plain'. In the biblical...

Did you know that holiday festivities on and around December 25th date back over 2,000 years ago? This video is all about the history of Christmas, and how it has grown and developed as a holiday from its earliest...