ROME – The church where the tradition of celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 may have begun was built near a pagan shrine as part of an effort to spread Christianity, a leading Italian scholar says.

If you’ve ever decorated a Christmas tree and thought, “This feels a little too magical to be strictly Christian,” congratulations — your intuition is correct and possibly clairvoyant. Christmas, for ...

In the 4th century, Emperor Julian attempted something extraordinary. He tried to reverse the transformation of the Roman ...

Many of the Easter traditions Christians celebrate today date back to the early days of Christianity. Karl Gehring/The Denver Post via Getty Images Easter brings together an unlikely cadre of ...

As for Easter eggs and bunnies, there is little evidence that modern Christians lifted these symbols from pagans. In the early years of the Church, eating eggs was forbidden during Lent. Therefore, ...

This article first ran in 2015. Every year around Christmastime the word "Yule" pops up all over the place, especially in advertising. Maybe it's because it rhymes with so many words, making for ...

Archaeologists recently stumbled across a medieval pagan cult site in the Netherlands where they found a bounty of treasure. The findings were published in the journal Medieval Archaeology. According ...

Burma/Mayanmar has opened up to tourism in the last year or two and record numbers are now visiting this beautiful, mesmerising country. All visitors to Burma will visit the ancient kingdom of Pagan ...

Cool dancing, everyone … can we open our prezzies now? Richard Milnes, CC BY-SA In the movie The Life of Brian (1979), Reg, played by John Cleese, asks fellow members of the People’s Front of Judea: … ...