Christmas and carols may seem as synonymous as summer and the beach, but as with so many Christmas traditions, it was the Victorians who really made it an integral part of the festivities and now we couldn't imagine a Christmas without carol singers belting out Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! When you delve in to history it's quite easy to see how Christmas carols evolved, and why people go from door to door singing carols. Originally 'carols' were groups of people who would dance in a circle but soon added music and song. The practice of going door to door and singing in return for food and treats was called wassailing. It didn't take long for Christmas carols to be integrated with the children who would go wassailing during the festive season. Nowadays of course people still go carol singing from door to door, but are more likely to ask for a

While the thought of cooking a Christmas dinner for the first time might seem daunting, it need not be all that hard. If you’ve tried your hand at cooking before then cooking for Christmas day shouldn’t pose a real challenge. One of the reasons people don’t look forward to cooking a Christmas dinner is because of the amount of food that is involved. You have to prepare everything from the turkey (or chicken) to the vegetables, and not to mention the dessert at the end! But with a little bit of planning, cooking the perfect Christmas dinner is actually just a process of following some basic steps. First things first though, how many people are you cooking for? If it’s a family of 5 then you will need to get a whole turkey to cook in the oven, any less and you can use a turkey ‘crown’ which is just the

Year after year hundreds of thousands of people tear out their hair and go crazy vacuuming up Christmas tree needles and swear never again will they get a real tree. But then Christmas comes around again the following year and all the fallen needles are forgotten as you rush out to buy another tree. There are also all the problems with actually buying a real tree too. If you buy it too early it will start to look a little bare by Christmas Day, if you wait too long all the good trees could be gone, then if you find the perfect tree after hours of looking it could be too big or too small for your room. When it comes to Christmas Trees, real ones are so 20th century, modern artificial Christmas trees not only look like the real thing now but there is such a huge range you can find

You know Christmas is just around the corner when you hear Jingle Bells Rock or Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas on the radio or in the store, but there's something magical about Christmas that makes so many people want to write songs and sing about it. Everyone has their own opinion of what makes a great Christmas song, some love the crooning voice of Bing Crosby's White Christmas, others like the swinging tune of Frosty the Snowman and then there are those that like the modern classics like Wham's Last Christmas and Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime. In this list of the top 10 Christmas songs I will try and combine old with new, traditional with modern. Last Christmas – Wham For a song that is so depressing, Last Christmas is a surprising dance floor filler at Christmas time as millions of revellers announce that they gave their heart away last Christmas.