Norse Yule solstice rituals inspired many modern Christmas decorations

The winter solstice has been celebrated globally for millennia

From gatherings at Stonehenge in the UK to celebrations of the triumph of Mithra in Iran, cultures around the world have marked the shortest day of the year in a variety of ways for a very long time. Here are eight known to us today that endure.

The origins of Iceland's child-eating Yule Cat legend

Iceland is a cold place, and wool production has long been a key means of surviving the climate's severity. For those Icelanders who failed to get new Christmas clothing before the holiday, their lurked a vicious, hungry cat to consume them. The centuries-old folklore is a fascinating story of social control through the tales we tell. For a dose of Christmas fear, read this wild article.

Saturnalia was a Roman festival that helped shape Christmas

Ancient Romans celebrated Saturnalia in mid-December, honoring Saturn, the god of agriculture, with week-long street festivals. These celebrations featured gift exchanges, lavish meals, and gambling, which was prohibited in public at the time.

Leaving cookies for Santa became popular in America during the Great Depression

During the period of economic hardship, many parents wanted to teach their children the importance of sharing and gratitude. The tradition dates even further back to ancient Norse mythology. The god Odin and his eight-legged horse, Sleipner, were left food in exchange for gifts.

Christmas elves evolved from Norse mythology to Santa’s workshop

Elves originated as powerful human-sized beings in Norse mythology, closely tied to nature and fertility. In the 1800s, American writers reimagined them as tiny, toy-making assistants for Santa Claus, with later visual depictions by Norman Rockwell and Disney solidifying their role in Christmas folklore.

Martin Luther is often cited as the first to decorate the Christmas tree—though the practice began decades earlier

Luther lore claims he may have been the first to link tree decorations to Jesus, as he used candles to symbolize the Nativity star. However, German bakers had adorned evergreens with apples and sweets as early as 1419 for Christmas Eve displays.

See Christmas traditions from around the world

From Venezuelans roller-skating to church to the decoration of boats in Greece, Christmas traditions vary widely all around the world. See examples from 30 different countries, which highlight how a country’s history shapes its holiday traditions.

Christmas celebrates the anniversary of God's birth as the man Jesus

The major holiday originated in the Christian doctrine of God's incarnation in first-century Roman Judea. Though it was not celebrated for several hundred years after Jesus' death, it took on greater importance as the church spread, culminating in a global holiday season today.

Viking raids spread Scandinavian culture far beyond northern Europe

Between roughly 800 and 1200 CE, seafaring Vikings from Scandinavia combined skilled craftsmanship with violent coastal raids. Their expeditions extended cultural influence from the British Isles to Northern Africa, reshaping medieval trade, warfare, and settlement patterns.

Thirty weird facts about Christmas trees

From its fascinating origin to how yours is grown today, these incredible Christmas tree facts will add a little bit more wonder to your holiday season.

Christmas carols evolved from medieval folk songs to modern holiday staples

Christmas carols began as communal folk songs in medieval Europe, and were later adapted into religious hymns. Revived in England in the 19th century, they have become a core holiday tradition around the world.

A Swedish town erects a giant straw Christmas goat each year—often burned down by pranksters

Each year, the town of Gävle builds a giant straw Christmas goat, which pranksters often burn, despite heightened security measures. Notable attacks include arsonists dressed as Santa and gingerbread men firing flaming arrows and hackers disabling cameras before torching the goat.

Auroral myths include Valkyries, firefoxes, and torchlight from giants fishing at night

In Norse mythology, the light displays were considered reflections from the Valkyries' armor as the female warriors brought the souls of heroes to Valhalla. In Finland, firefoxes were thought to move so fast that they created sparks in the sky as their tails brushed against mountains.

Red and green became Christmas colors thanks to holly—and Coca-Cola

Holly's green leaves and bright red berries linked the colors to winter festivals for centuries, but Coca-Cola's 1931 Santa—painted by Haddon Sundblom in Coke-red robes—helped cement red and green as the modern Christmas palette.

Many Christians observe a different theme for each week of Advent

Many churches structure Advent around weekly themes—often hope, peace, joy, and love—which shape sermons, prayers, Scripture readings, and the lighting of candles on the Advent wreath. The specific themes vary widely across denominations and communities.

Aurora-related activities drive significant tourism in regions near the Arctic Circle

As the peak solar cycle approached from late 2024 to early 2026, airlines serving countries such as Iceland, Finland, and Canada increased their scheduled flights, with direct flights to Tromsø, Norway, doubling since 2018. The northern lights tourism market has grown about 10% per year and is expected to increase from $941.9M in 2024 to $1.648B in 2030.

Hanukkah wasn’t always a major Jewish holiday

In the 1800s, Jewish immigrants to the United States began searching for ways to maintain their cultural identity in an overwhelmingly Christian environment. Because Hanukkah often falls around the same time as Christmas, Jewish congregations began adapting Christmastime traditions like gift giving to their own holiday.

The Slavic Ded Moroz is a more secular version of Santa Claus

Atheism was long a central part of Soviet politics. One facet was an attempt to wipe out religious holidays, Christmas (and Santa) included. Ded Moroz, or Father Frost, is the Soviet version of Santa, who also travels by carriage and has a long white beard.

Halloween originated with the Celtic festival of Samhain

Halloween, a holiday primarily popular in the US and Canada, originated 2,000 years ago with the Celtic people. The Celts interpreted this transition as when ghosts returned to the land of the living, leading to rituals like feasts, bonfires, and wearing costumes made of animal body parts on Oct. 31.

Scandinavians toast with an emphatic ‘skål!’

The word comes from the word for “bowl,” a reference to the vessels of alcohol early revelers passed around at celebrations. Now, the word more closely resembles “cheers!” In response, it’s polite to respond “takk,” or “thank you.”

The history of Solvang, California's little Danish village

Just north of Santa Barbara sits a curious California gem: Solvang, a small town constructed in the Danish Provincial style. This video tour of the village provides a fascinating history of how the town became a miniature Copenhagen and does so in a unique way: by trying to recreate vintage photographs of the town. It makes for an entertaining and educational tour.

Medieval European winters were colder than ours, but peasants stayed warm

Medieval winters were colder than ours today while the continent was mired in the so-called Little Ice Age. Without modern technologies, peasants survived with simple, sometimes genius, solutions, including central, chimney-less fireplaces (vented by small, draftless vents) and decorative handwarmers.

Lunar New Year has a rich tradition of visual symbolism

Explore centuries of art related to the holiday—from the dragon robes worn by royalty to the calligraphy symbols thought to bring prosperity and fortune. Ancient artistic practices like woodblock printing, painting, and dance weave together to create the visual language of the Lunar New Year.

The ritual burns of California forests

Many ecosystems around the world have adapted to regularly occurring wildfires. Some human cultures saw the advantage of such fires and integrated them into their community rituals. Learn about similar tribal traditions looking to better manage California's forests today.

LEDs emit pure colors, while incandescent bulbs filter white light

Traditional Christmas lights produce softer, less saturated colors by partially blocking the full spectrum of light, resulting in a particularly warm glow by dimming the cooler blue tones. LEDs are designed to emit a single wavelength of light, creating intense colors that are visually unbalanced in multicolor environments.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

Poison ivy was sent to Europe in the 1600s as an exotic, ornamental oddity, where it was purposefully grown in the English royal gardens at Kew, the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and a few other locations.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

The history of many kitchen appliances involves unexpected discoveries and applications, including wartime radar turned hamster defroster and replacing an 'ice king' with heat-stealing boxes.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Coral reefs get their colors from zooxanthellae—microorganisms that line corals' digestive tracts and provide them with sugars in exchange for a home within this protective tissue.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.