The Jewish Festival of Lights Chanukah, or Hanukkah, lasts for eight days, beginning the 25th of the Hebrew month Kislev (November-December). It celebrates the victory of Judah the Maccabee over the Syrian tyrant Antiochus over 2100 years ago. In 165BC, after three years of war, Judah won a decisive victory over the Syrians and returned [...]

The origins of Christmas are found in festivities with an abundance of meals. In the earlier years, as soon as the weather got cold, pigs, calves and poultry were carved up into different cuts of meat. Fillets, cutlets, hams and pigs’ knuckles and trotters, together with cheeses, were buried in the snow or stored in [...]

The Christmas cracker was invented in 1847 by Tom Smith, a baker of wedding cakes from Clerkenwell, London. On a trip to Paris in 1840 Smith discovered the “bon-bon,” a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of paper. Back in London, his “new” sweets became quite popular. When he noticed that young men were buying [...]

Solstice means “sun standing still.” In the Northern Hemisphere, it is the first day of winter, the shortest day and longest night of the year, occurring on the 20th, 21st or 22nd of December. Earth is nearer the sun in January than it is in June – by almost 5 million km (3 million miles). [...]

Mail used to be sent free; the delivery was paid for by the recipient. But in 1837, an English schoolmaster named Rowland Hill noticed that the post office lost out too much by recipients refusing delivery. He proposed prepaid stamps in a pamphlet called The Post Office Reform. On 1 May 1840, the first stamps [...]

It is told that Saint Boniface, a monk from Crediton, Devonshire, England who established Christian churches in France and Germany in the 7th Century, one day came upon a group of pagans gathered around a big oak tree about to sacrifice a child to the god Thor. To stop the sacrifice and save the child’s [...]

Gifts were exchanged in the Roman ceremonies of Saturnalia, the festivities of solstice, the origin of our Christmas celebrations. We know the exchanging of gifts best from the three magi mentioned in the Bible. But as mentioned in the History of Christmas, during the previous centuries Christmas was a solemn affair. Religious puritans reminded Christians [...]

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