The myth Father Christmas delivers your children’s presents. The “truth” If he’s leaving gifts, he isn’t Father Christmas. That’s not what FC does. The first personification of Christmas that we know

Whether it’s a rosy-cheeked girl wrapped up warm, sun-bathed sheep at twilight or a snow-blanketed apple orchard, myriad pictures sum up the festive season, as 16 friends of COUNTRY LIFE tell Carla Passino

→ When the Tudor poet Thomas Tusser wrote of “Turkey wel drest” as part of a Christmas feast in 1573, he was in fact taking part in a trend new to these shores. Turkeys, those red-necked birds who gob

Andy Warhol found Christmas a tricky time, yet threw himself into the festivities and, when he decided to illustrate his series on American myths, he had no doubt he should include the jolly old man in the bright red suit

With Hallowe’en out of the way, Christmas is the next big ghostly occasion in the UK traditional calendar. But what, one may wonder, of the rest of Europe? Ghost hunter Peter Underwood called Europe “

Held in high esteem and lavished with furs, velvet and precious stones, young male choristers-turned-bishops were all the rage at Christmas in the Middle Ages, says Matthew Dennison