
The Connection Between Halloween and Christmas
By B. Francis Morlan Imagine this: holiday celebrants by the hundreds take to the streets wearing all manner of costumes and masks, going door to door seeking treats in a yearly ritual of fun and frivolity. Halloween, right? Nope -- it's…

There’s Something About Merry
It falls from our lips without much thought: “Merry Christmas!”. But what is it we are really saying? In an informal survey conducted recently more than 84 percent of Americans asked thought that the word “merry” meant “jolly”. Taken…

Mistletoe
By Jeff Westover Two words: parasite and dung. One today can hardly believe the association of these two words with something so romantically quaint as mistletoe is now in our Christmas traditions. So let the reader beware. What follows…

History of Christmas Lights
By Bill Nelson The world's first practical light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison in 1879, and it was to be only three years later that an associate of his, one Edward Johnson, electrically lit a Christmas tree for the first time. The tree…