Christmas trees might seem timeless today, but American decorating habits have shifted dramatically over the decades. Long before tinsel, flocking or LED lights, winter greenery carried deep symbolic meaning.

Who is Santa Claus and what's his origin story? Why do we decorate a pine tree with lights? What is Yule and why does it have a log? When did gift-giving become a thing for Christmas? They're the questions you probably have or get from your kids every holiday season. Dr. Katherine Walker wants to make sure you're armed with the answers.

In a chamber beneath the Petit Ermitage Hotel in West Hollywood, 11 seekers gather around a seance table. Deliberately left without a medium to channel the dead, they’re sequestered with their imaginations, what the event organizer calls “the liminal space between belief and disbelief in the paranormal.”

Halloween brings out familiar symbols like witches, jack-o’-lanterns and black cats. But the season also beckons a more macabre figure lurking inside homes, classrooms and front lawns—the skeleton.

Whether they’ve been cemented in culture since antiquity, since the turn of the 21st century or anytime in between, the traditions and symbols of Christmas, from decorated trees to the Grinch, share a DNA of identity and community.

As we march toward another new year, we put more distance between ourselves and the origins of the traditions many of us hold dear. Fruitcake, gift giving, and hanging ornaments – they’re all a blend of cultural ideas crackling aside the hearty yule log on a holiday hearth.

Explore the origins behind witch costume features—the hat, the black dress, prominent nose and green skin.

Halloween vandals are no longer egging and toilet papering homes — they’re stealing lawn decor.