Dec 20 2025
Every December, millions of families perform a ritual that would look rather strange if we had not grown up with it. We bring an evergreen tree indoors, cover its branches with lights and ornaments, place gifts underneath it, and make it the glowing centerpiece of Christmas. The Christmas tree feels timeless, but the familiar decorated …
Dec 19 2025
Few Christmas songs are quite as recognizable—or quite as strange—as “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” A partridge appears in a pear tree. Turtle doves arrive next, followed by hens, birds, rings, geese, swans, milkmaids, dancers, leaping lords, pipers, and drummers. By the final verse, the imaginary gift exchange has become an entire festive parade. The …
Dec 19 2025
Few cookies look more at home on a Christmas cookie tray than snowball cookies. Round, buttery, and completely covered in powdered sugar, they really do look like miniature snowballs tucked among the gingerbread, chocolate cookies, and other holiday treats. Beneath that snowy coating is a tender shortbread-style cookie filled with vanilla and finely chopped pecans …
Dec 18 2025
Christmas music does not always have to arrive with jingling bells, booming choirs, and songs energetic enough to send everyone rushing toward the dance floor. Some of the loveliest holiday music is quiet enough to accompany a snowy afternoon, an evening beside the Christmas tree, or those rare December moments when there is nowhere else …
Dec 16 2025
Christmas is the perfect time for a little silliness. Between decorating the tree, baking cookies, wrapping presents, and waiting for Santa Claus, there are plenty of opportunities to make the whole family groan with a wonderfully cheesy Christmas joke. These 50 funny Christmas jokes for kids are clean, simple, and easy to remember. Try them …
Dec 15 2025
Crunchy cereal, salty pretzels, colorful Christmas candies, and creamy white chocolate come together in this easy Reindeer Chow recipe, a sweet-and-salty holiday snack that takes only minutes to make. It is the kind of Christmas treat that requires almost no cooking and can be made ahead for parties, movie nights, cookie exchanges, classroom celebrations, or …
Dec 15 2025
Few periods have shaped our picture of Christmas as profoundly as the Victorian era. Decorated trees glowing with candles, Christmas cards arriving through the post, crackers snapping across the dinner table, children receiving toys, families gathering for an elaborate meal, and stories emphasizing generosity and goodwill all became increasingly familiar during the reign of Queen …
Dec 14 2025
Christmas in Hawaiʻi looks a little different from the snowy holiday scenes printed on greeting cards. Palm trees may be wrapped in lights, families can spend Christmas afternoon at the beach, and Santa is occasionally portrayed arriving by outrigger canoe rather than sleigh. Yet beneath those tropical details is a holiday shaped by Hawaiʻi’s long …
Dec 13 2025
Christmas movies often invite us into impossibly perfect homes. Fires crackle in stone fireplaces, enormous meals emerge effortlessly from spotless kitchens, snow falls at exactly the right moment, and everyone seems to know how to decorate a tree without becoming tangled in the lights. Christmas in Connecticut had already figured out the joke in 1945. …
Dec 11 2025
Some Christmas traditions happen around the dinner table. Others involve decorating the tree, exchanging presents, baking cookies, or driving around the neighborhood to look at lights. Then there is the tradition that requires almost no preparation at all: getting comfortable on the couch and watching a favorite Christmas movie. The best Christmas movies are remarkably …
