Judith Flanders is the author of the bestselling The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (2003); A Circle of Sisters (2001), which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award; the New York Times bestselling The Invention of Murder (2011), shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-fiction; The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London (2012), shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times History Book of the Year; The Making of Home (2014); and Christmas: A Biography (2017). In her leisure time, she also writes the Sam Clair series of comic crime novels.

Introduction - i: Introduction Unit - 1: Christmas is Coming Poem - 1: Christmas is Coming - Traditional Poem - 2: A Christmas Blessing - Traditional Poem - 3: Now Thrice Welcome, Christmas - Traditional Poem - 4: Deck the Halls - Traditional Poem - 5: We Wish You a Merry Christmas - Traditional Poem - 6: Pudding Charms - Charlotte Druitt Cole Poem - 7: The Christmas Pudding - Traditional Poem - 8: Christmas Plum Pudding - Clifton Bingham Poem - 9: A Dish for a Poet - Traditional Poem - 10: Yule Log - Robert Herrick Poem - 11: Minstrels - William Wordsworth Poem - 12: Old Christmastide - Sir Walter Scott Poem - 13: December - John Clare Poem - 14: French Noel - William Morris Poem - 15: Wassail, Wassail - Traditional Poem - 16: Here We Come A-Wassailing - Traditional Poem - 17: Nowell Sing We - Traditional Unit - 2: I Sing of a Maiden Poem - 1: I Sing of a Maiden - Traditional Poem - 2: A Virgin Most Pure - Traditional Poem - 3: The Mother of God - W. B. Yeats Poem - 4: The Cherry Tree Carol - Traditional Poem - 5: Joseph - G. K. Chesterton Poem - 6: The Angel Gabriel - Traditional tr. Sabine Baring-Gould Poem - 7: Once in Royal David's City - Cecil Frances Alexander Poem - 8: O Little Town of Bethlehem - Phillips Brooks Poem - 9: Away in a Manger - Traditional Poem - 10: The Old Hark - Traditional Poem - 11: Angels, from the Realms of Glory - James Montgomery Poem - 12: Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - Charles Wesley Poem - 13: A Hymn for Christmas Day - Traditional Poem - 14: Joy to the World! - Isaac Watts Poem - 15: In Dulci Jubilo - Traditional Poem - 16: Christmas, A Song of Joy at Dawn - Traditional Poem - 17: O Come, All Ye Faithful - Traditional tr. F. Oakeley and W. T. Brooke Unit - 3: Peace and Lullabies Poem - 1: Peace - Henry Vaughan Poem - 2: A Child this Day is Born - Traditional Poem - 3: Silent Night - Joseph Mohr tr. John Freeman Young Poem - 4: Christus Natus Est - Countee Cullen Poem - 5: On Christmas Day to My Heart - Clement Paman Poem - 6: An Ode of the Birth of Our Saviour - Robert Herrick Section - 7: The House of Christmas - G. K. Chesterton Poem - 8: The Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ - Christopher Smart Poem - 9: New Prince, New Pomp - Robert Southwell Poem - 10: Past Three O'Clock - George Ratcliffe Woodward Poem - 11: Love Came Down at Christmas - Christina Rossetti Poem - 12: Before the Paling of the Stars - Christina Rossetti Poem - 13: The Coventry Carol - Traditional Poem - 14: A Cradle Song - William Blake Poem - 15: The Rocking Carol - Percy Dearmer Poem - 16: Infant Holy - Traditional tr. Edith M.G. Reed Poem - 17: Sing Lullaby - Sabine Baring-Gould Poem - 18: Welcome to Heaven's King - Traditional Poem - 19: Hymn for Christmas Day - John Byrom Poem - 20: It Was on Christmas Day - Traditional Poem - 21: I Saw a Stable - Mary Elizabeth Coleridge Unit - 4: Holly and Ivy Poem - 1: Holly - Christina Rossetti Poem - 2: Advent - Christina Rossetti Poem - 3: Green Grow'th the Holly - Traditional Poem - 4: Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming - Traditional tr. Theodore Baker and Harriet R. K. Spaeth Poem - 5: The Mahogany Tree - William Makepeace Thackeray Poem - 6: The Holly and the Ivy - Traditional Poem - 7: The First Tree in the Greenwood - Traditional Unit - 5: Bird and Beasts Poem - 1: Eddi's Service - Rudyard Kipling Poem - 2: The Oxen - Thomas Hardy Poem - 3: Sheep in Winter - John Clare Poem - 4: While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks - Nahum Tate Poem - 6: Go, Tell it on the Mountain - Traditional Poem - 7: The Shepherds' Carol - Traditional Poem - 8: Out in the Dark - Edward Thomas Poem - 9: Birds at Winter Nightfall - Thomas Hardy Poem - 10: Little Robin Redbreast - Traditional Unit - 6: Snow and Ice Poem - 1: Christmas Night - Traditional Poem - 2: The First Nowell - Traditional Poem - 3: Snow Storm - John Clare Poem - 4: See, Amid the Winter's Snow - Edward Caswall Poem - 5: A Winter Night - William Barnes Section - 6: Winter Gerard - Manley Hopkins Poem - 7: Winter-Time - Robert Louis Stevenson Poem - 8: Snow Edward Thomas Poem - 9: from As You Like It - William Shakespeare Poem - 10: Up in the Morning Early - Robert Burns Poem - 11: In Tenebris - Ford Madox Ford Poem - 12: In the Bleak Midwinter - Christina Rossetti Poem - 13: It Came Upon the Midnight Clear - Edmund Hamilton Sears Poem - 14: Snow in the Suburbs - Thomas Hardy Poem - 15: from The Prelude - William Wordsworth Poem - 16: from Frost at Midnight - Samuel Taylor Coleridge Poem - 17: A Frosty Day - Lord de Tabley Poem - 18: Ice on the Highway - Thomas Hardy Poem - 19: Now Winter Nights Enlarge - Thomas Campion Unit - 7: Nativity Poem - 1: Christmas - George Herbert Poem - 2: The Nativity - Henry Vaughan Poem - 3: Nativity - John Donne Poem - 4: Upon Christ His Birth - Sir John Suckling Poem - 5: Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913 - Robert Bridges Poem - 6: from In Memoriam - Alfred, Lord Tennyson Poem - 7: Christmas Eve - Christina Rossetti Unit - 8: The Earthly Paradise Poem - 1: from The Earthly Paradise - William Morris Poem - 2: God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen - Traditional Poem - 3: Carol - Ben Jonson Poem - 4: Christmas at Sea - Robert Louis Stevenson Poem - 5: Christmas in India - Rudyard Kipling Poem - 6: From East to West, From Shore to Shore - Traditional Unit - 9: Kings Poem - 1: The Three Kings - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Poem - 2: We Three Kings - John Henry Hopkins Poem - 3: As With Gladness Men of Old - William Chatterton Dix Poem - 4: Good King Wenceslas - John Mason Neale Poem - 5: The Mystic Magi Robert Stephen Hawker Poem - 6: Kings Came Riding - Charles Williams Unit - 10: I Saw Three Ships Poem - 1: I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In - Traditional Poem - 2: As I Sat on a Sunny Bank - Traditional Poem - 3: To- morrow Shall Be My Dancing Day - Traditional Poem - 4: The True Christmas - Henry Vaughan Poem - 5: A Visit from St Nicholas - Clement Clarke Moore Poem - 6: What Billy Wanted - Traditional Poem - 7: A Little Christmas Card - Traditional Poem - 8: The Twelve Days of Christmas - Traditional Unit - 11: New Year Poem - 1: Another Christmas Gone - Traditional Poem - 2: The Old Year - John Clare Poem - 3: The New Year - Traditional Poem - 4: New Year - Christopher Smart Poem - 5: The New Year - Traditional Poem - 5: Auld Lang Syne - Robert Burns Poem - 6: Ring Out, Wild Bells - Alfred, Lord Tennyson Poem - 7: Farewell Old Year - Traditional Poem - 8: New Every Morning - Susan Coolidge Poem - 9: The Year - Ella Wheeler Wilcox Poem - 10: from The Tempest - William Shakespeare Index - ii: Index of Poets Index - iii: Index of Titles Index - iv: Index of First Lines