Life

What does your toddler say about you?
Human behaviour is acknowledged to be made up of a complex intermingling of innate being and the environment to which someone is exposed â the nature vs nurture tension.

More married couples putting off divorce for the sake of their children
New research has found that more married couples with children in the UK are choosing to stay together as divorce rates continue to fall.

Sleep better and lose weight: the health benefits of abstaining from alcohol
Researchers at the University of Sussex also found that just one dry month led to lower levels of alcohol consumption throughout the year

New recycling process could help your Christmas tree lead a surprising second life
It wouldn't be Christmas without a tree, but which is more sustainable â a real tree or a plastic one?

Going to the movies and museums cuts risk of depression
Older people who regularly go to the movies and other cultural events are nearly a third less likely to have depression.

Now and Not Yet: What the Bible says about the Kingdom of God
Nothing illustrates both the challenge, and the fundamental importance, of developing In-tension-al Faith more than those words 'now' and 'not yet'.

Lovingly liberated: Paul's theology of the cross
The story of Jesus, his cross and resurrection, is our own story.

Christmas cards featuring alcohol are reinforcing binge drinking as a social norm, say health experts
Christmas cards and birthday cards that make light of drinking are reinforcing negative social attitudes around excessive alcohol consumption, experts warn in the British Medical Journal.

Post-natal depression in dads linked to emotional problems in teenage daughters
One in 20 dads was found to have experienced post-natal depression, a condition commonly associated with mothers of newborns

Who were the Magi and why did they come to worship Jesus?
In the Western Christian tradition, they have been given names â Balthasar, king of Chaldea, Caspar, king of Tarshish, and Melchior, king of Nubia. But none of these are original.
Christmas season left Victorian shop workers 'more dead than alive'
Many of our festive traditions â from exchanging cards and pulling crackers to decorating trees â were popularised by the Victorians.

Charles Dickens and the birth of the classic English Christmas dinner
Charles Dickens popularised the traditional, English Christmas in 1843 in his novel A Christmas Carol, when Bob Cratchit and his family sit down on Christmas Day to eat a dinner of goose with mashed potatoes and apple sauce accompanied by sage and onion stuffing and followed by Christmas pudding.

'The Numinous Woman': How a Cornish poet caught the mystery of the Incarnation
One of the most intriguing of Christmas poems is not as well known as it should be.

Good news of great joy: Immanuel has come
I remember my first Santa Claus doubts. How could a fat man get down a skinny chimney, not just at our house, but at the houses of little boys and girls all over the world?

What has Isaiah's Immanuel prophecy got to do with the birth of Jesus?
What's gone before is a picture of muddle and confusion, fear, politics, war, destruction and hunger. We skip all that and go straight to the nice bit.

The lost message of Christmas: Why we need to read Matthew 1
One passage that's never, ever read at the carol service is Matthew 1: 1-17.