In time for the winter solstice, we revisit our episode on the history of Christmas trees, with historian Judith Flanders, author of Christmas: A Biography (2017) as well as numerous books on the Victorian period – including The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Reveled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime and The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London.

Flanders helps us to parse history from myth, as we discuss the origins of Christmas and the practice of bringing evergreen trees into our homes to decorate them for the holidays.