Seven ancient ‘O Antiphons’—names for Jesus—are sung in the days before Christmas

How ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ became a beloved, haunting Advent hymn

The text of the hymn is rooted in the ancient O Antiphons. The melancholic melody was traced to an anonymous 15th-century author. The hymn stands as one of the few standard Christmas carols actually intended to be sung during the season of Advent. Listen to the song’s history here.

The season celebrates Jesus' birth and anticipates the Second Coming of Christ

The Christian Bible’s New Testament features four gospels, or lives of Jesus, each of which describes the birth of Jesus in different ways (or does not mention it). Historians, both secular and religious, have sought to contextualize the biblical accounts with empirical evidence.

Advent originally had almost nothing to do with the Christmas story

Early Advent wasn’t about celebrating Jesus’s birth. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the season focused almost entirely on preparing for Christ’s Second Coming and “final judgment.” Advent’s connection to the Nativity only emerged centuries later.

Some Christian communities start Advent six weeks before Christmas instead of four

While most Western churches begin Advent on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, the Ambrosian Rite (northern Italy) and the Mozarabic Rite (Spain) begin six Sundays before Christmas.

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

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

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.

With the exception of Earth, the planets are named after Roman gods and goddesses

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are named after the messenger of the gods, the goddess of love, the god of war, the king of gods, the god of agriculture, the god of the sky, and the god of the sea, respectively. "Earth" comes from Old English and Germanic words meaning "ground."

'Christmas Past' examines the forgotten stories behind holiday traditions

“Christmas Past” is a long-running podcast that explores the origins of Christmas traditions through short and engaging episodes, blending historical deep dives with warm-hearted narration.

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.

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.

Track Santa and his industrious elves

Starting in December, you can follow along with Santa’s trek across the globe. Spend time on the map, play games, and even translate your holiday messages into other languages.

The standing ovation comes from an ancient Roman military tradition

Ovation is derived from the Latin for “I rejoice” and was a ceremonial salute to military generals who'd been victorious in battle.

Adam Sandler's 'Chanukah Song' remains significant to the holiday

Adam Sandler’s ’90s SNL bit, “The Chanukah Song,” charmed Gentiles and Jews alike with ridiculous rhymes and catchy chords. Author Nathan Rabin says it also served the important purpose of making Jewish kids feel as special as their Christmas-celebrating classmates.

Hear what ancient Greek music sounded like

Greek poetry was usually created with the intention that the words would be sung along with music. Evidence and reconstructions of ancient melodies and instruments mean researchers and musicians of today can play music in which the final notes have long since faded.

Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' is the longest-running No. 1 single

In 2025, the 1994 track spent 20 weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. The song has been a popular Christmas number since its release, but streaming has elevated it to a perennial chart-topper: Every time someone plays the song on a service like Spotify (something that’s likely to happen every holiday season), they’re effectively casting a vote for it to hit the chart.

Hear today's call to prayer and special 'duas' sung by the muezzin

The call to prayer is a distinctive sound marking the start and end of the fast each day, playing a key cultural role in the rhythms of the period. This archive collects "duas" (or supplications, or a prayerful petition) for each day in the year, with timely prayers and recitations sung by the muezzin, or cantor, in gorgeously intricate melodic intervals.

'Jesus Christ Superstar' was an album before it was a musical

Written in the late '60s by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, who were hot on the heels of the successful "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," "Jesus Christ Superstar" was first recorded as an album in the style of other popular rock operas of the time, like The Who's "Tommy."

The earliest depiction of Jesus' crucifixion

The Alexamenos Graffito is widely considered the oldest surviving image of the crucifixion. It was scratched into a plaster wall near Rome's Palatine Hill, probably around 200 CE. It is not devotional art—it shows a donkey-headed figure on a cross alongside the Greek inscription "Alexamenos worships his god," apparently drawn by a student mocking a classmate's Christian faith. No devotional depiction of the crucifixion would be made until the sixth century.

A year's name is determined by the 12-year Chinese zodiac cycle

According to Lunar New Year traditions, the coming year gets its name based on the 12-year Chinese zodiac cycle. The animals, in order, are rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. 2026 is the Year of the Horse, an animal known for its strength and momentum, while 2027 will be the Year of the Goat.

For the medievals, the moon was a versatile religious symbol

Within the distinct traditions of Christianity and Islam, the moon became a central metaphor and sign for religious teaching. For Christians, its light was used to explain Jesus' humanity with the light of the sun (divinity). For Muslims, the moon represented a cosmic longing for god.

Easter is an uncommon name for Pascha, from the Hebrew 'pesach'

It's often said Easter is derived from pagan rituals. The word "Easter" does stem from a Germanic term for "dawn," but most cultural names for the holiday more clearly point to its Jewish history in the Passover.

Breaking down Anthropic's products and why their models are named after literary forms

Since March 2024, the Claude series of large language models includes three varieties—Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus—named to metaphorically illustrate increasing complexity and computing power. Claude Code can perform software engineering tasks for developers and, as of January 2026, writes nearly all of Anthropic's code alongside Opus 4.5.

An early literary mention of a New Year's kiss dates to the 14th century

The medieval poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” includes a description of a New Year’s party where women are planning on giving “New Year’s gifts” to men. Scholars say it’s implied that the “gifts” are kisses.

Eighty-four different pieces were composed for the Windows 95 startup sound

Brian Eno, the ambient music artist, was tasked with creating a 3.25-second jingle that was inspiring, universal, optimistic, and futuristic in tone. As with all of his compositions, Eno created the sound, which was double the requested length, on a Mac.

Ofrendas are memorial altars constructed to honor deceased loved ones

Each element of the altar is meaningful. There is food and drink to nourish the spirits on their journey, candles to light their way, and incense to protect against evil spirits, among other things.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

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

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

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

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

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.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

Search a massive database of over 4 decades of clues from the TV quiz show 'Jeopardy!'

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

When caught in the mouths of cardinal fish, seed shrimp release glowing, bioluminescent chemicals, which alert predators of the cardinal fish, prompting the shrimp's ejection.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

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.

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