The most wonderful time of the year is here! Christmas represents many things to many people: spiritually, culturally, and socially. But the one place where most of us unite is how Christmas makes us feel. How did Christmas become such a happy occasion? And where did our most beloved holiday traditions originate? Some stretch back centuries, and others are much more recent. The simplest explanation for the whole phenomenon is that special feeling—an innocent sense of wonder that has been known to overcome even the most cynical.