A look at the origins of our Christmas traditions.

Most people realise that the way in which we celebrate Christmas now was largely in a way developed under the Victorians, but also accept that most of its component traditions come down from the ancient pagan past.

This talk asks and seeks to answer some major questions about this assumption: how old are our Christmas traditions, and from where do they actually come, and are there genuinely old and enduring features of the midwinter holiday? In other words, what actually is Christmas?

Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at Bristol University. The Idler’s favourite contemporary historian, he specialises in late medieval and early modern English history.