Life
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.
Why I don't care about putting on a perfect Christmas
There is nothing wrong with excelling at hospitality and there is certainly nothing wrong with opening up our lives to share with others in need.
UK scientists are more atheist than the rest of the population
Nearly half of the UK's scientists do not believe in God, researchers have found.
The more popular children are also more stingy
Children who are popular are less likely to be generous with their friends when it comes to Christmas gifts, research has found.
O come, all ye faithful: 5 reasons to sing Christmas carols
From Australia to Argentina to Anchorage, the message of Jesus will resonate from the mouths of his people in the same melodies and lyrics that his people have been singing for centuries.
Christmas is a spiritual eruption: What the West can learn from the Eastern Church
Jesus' birth is not primarily an historical event, though it was that. It's a spiritual one.
And Was He God With Us?: A meditation for Christmas
And was he God With Us the second the Spirit shadowed the virgin?
John's Gospel: Christmas on a cosmic scale
It's all too easy over the Christmas season to swap the important stuff for the big, shiny festive stuff and end up disappointed.
Doing good in secret: How George W Bush sponsored a child through Compassion International
An extraordinary story has emerged of former US president George W Bush's anonymous sponsorship of a Filippino child through Christian agency Compassion.
Diets heavy in junk food increase risk of depression, study finds
Eating too much fast food, processed meat and cakes is putting people at increased risk of depression, according to a new study.
Over a quarter of Brits and Americans would like to see a female or gender-neutral Santa
With the 'gender neutral' trend shaking up everything from personal identities to clothes and toys, it should come as no surprise that over a quarter of people also want it to shake up the tradition of a male Santa Claus.