Our festive traditions may feel rooted in celebrations of the birth of Christ, but the trees and plants we use for decoration tell a different story

1. In the carol ‘The twelve days of Christmas’, what does ‘my true love’ give on the 10th day? a. Maids a-milkingb. French hensc. Geese a-layingd. Lords a-leaping 2. In which royal residence was Queen

The Bohemian King Wenceslas really was good, but his reward for gracious piety was not, discovers Ian Morton

→ 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

While the original National Folklore Survey from the 1960s was unscientific and open ended, simply asking random people “what do you know to be true?”, its 21st century successor is a very different b

Our round-up of the funny, fascinating and unusual stories this fortnight