This is it! Merry Christmas to all you beautiful Plus readers and listeners from the Plus team! We hope you'll have a marvellously happy 2012!

And since Christmas is all about getting together with the folks, here's some family maths. You might not be able to choose them, but at least you can analyse them!

The maths of your next family reunion.
The festive season can only mean one thing... getting together with the family! Find out exactly what you share in common!

Natural born mathematicians
What's the best present for the newest arrival in the family? Perhaps a maths book?

Career interview: Biomechanical engineer
Coming to think of it, how did that newest arrival make it to its present form from a tiny little speck in its mother's womb? Find out in this interview.

The mathematical Bernoullis from Basle
Here's a look at the most prodigious mathematical family ever.

Party people puzzle
Is it possible to hold a Christmas party with family and friends at which no two people have the same number of friends as each other?

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Oh! Look! The Higgs! If only we'd known it has been hiding behind this door all along.

Hooray for Higgs
"It's a great day for particle physics," says Ben Allanach, a theoretical physicist at the University of Cambridge. "It's very exciting, I think we're on the verge of the Higgs discovery." And indeed, it seems like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has given particle physics an early Christmas present — compelling evidence that the famous Higgs boson exists.

Countdown to the Higgs
Finding the Higgs: Ben Allanach explains it is not about catching a glimpse of the beast itself, but instead keeping a careful count of the evidence it leaves behind.

Particle hunting at the LHC
What goes on at CERN and why the hubbub about the Large Hadron Collider, known as the LHC?

The LHC for dummies
A quick overview of the world's biggest physics experiment.

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Christmas is a time of mysteries so we thought we'll give you the chance to put your favourite mystery to the experts. Pick a question in the poll on the right — after Christmas we'll answer the most popular question in articles and podcasts based on interviews with physicists and mathematicians who really know about these things.

We've already done this once before. The question that won was "what is time?" Find our answers here!

This project is a collaboration between Plus and FQXi, an organisation that supports and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology.

Apart from the Olympic Games and Alan Turing's centenary, 2012 will see another important event: the 15th birthday of Plus! To get into party mood, here are the 5 most popular Plus articles since current records began. A big thank you to the wonderful and generous people who have contributed these and all other Plus articles!

Number 1: Adam Smith and the invisible hand
Adam Smith is often thought of as the father of modern economics. In his book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations Smith decribed the "invisible hand" mechanism by which he felt economic society operated. Modern game theory has much to add to Smith's description.

Number 2: Mysterious number 6174
6174 is a very mysterious number. This article explains why, and how beautiful mathematical oddities can inspire us to discover new mathematics.

Number 3: Why is the violin so hard to play?
Number 3: As anyone starting out knows, the violin is a difficult instrument. It takes time before the novice player can expect to produce a musical note at the desired pitch, instead of a whistle, screech or graunch. This article explains why.

Number 4: The life and numbers of Fibonacci
Fibonacci not only gave us the famous number sequence but also introduced the decimal system to Europe.

It isn't often that a mathematical equation makes the national press, far less popular radio, or most astonishingly of all, is the subject of a debate in the UK parliament. However, as this article describes, in 2003 the good old quadratic equation, which we all learned about in school, reached these dizzy pinnacles of fame.

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