32 Interesting Christmas Facts You Didn’t Know

The iconic Christmas tree has a lot of roots, pun intended. Ancient Egyptians used to mark the winter solstice by decorating their homes with green palms, while the Romans celebrated Saturnalia with evergreen boughs. These green plants signified that the spring would return with new life. The first Christmas trees as we know them started in Germany in the 16th century

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Christmas trees have German roots, but they really took off in popularity thanks to Queen Victoria and her husband, German Prince Consort Albert. In 1848, they were sketched standing in front of their tree with their children by the Illustrated London News, which quickly made Christmas trees fashionable.

The original Santa Claus was actually Saint Nicholas, a Christian bishop in the 4th century. He didn’t wear the red suit that’s so famous today, but he did give all of his inheritance to the poor and needy. In Dutch, his name is Sinter Klaas, which later morphed into Santa Claus.

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Santa wasn’t always the jolly man in red. Older depictions of Santa from the early 1900s depicted him more sternly, and there wasn’t a standardized “look” for his appearance. The classic image of a happy and plump Santa that we all know today came in part from Coca-Cola ads, drawn in 1931 by illustrator Haddon Sundblom.

The historic Saint Nicholas heard about the plight of a local man who did not have enough dowry money to marry off his three daughters. The generous Nick tossed some money down the chimney that landed in the ladies’ stockings that were drying by the fire. After that, the tradition stuck!

A copywriter for the Montgomery Ward department store created the beloved reindeer in 1939. He wrote Rudolph into a children’s story that could be given out to promote the store. It was a huge hit, with more than 2.4 million copies distributed in its first year. In 1949, musician Gene Autry recorded the famous song “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and in 1964 came the movie featuring the Island of Misfit Toys.

Rudolph was almost named Rollo or Reginald, and his crew also had lots of other names. They’ve previously been called Flossie, Glossie, Racer, Pacer, Scratcher, Feckless, Ready, Steady and Fireball.

The custom of bringing evergreens into the home began in the 16th century among northern and eastern Europeans, primarily Germans, as a means of cleaning up the Christmas tree and making it more uniform. Instead of throwing out cut-off greens, people wove the excess into wreaths.

However, the religious significance is that the circular shape and evergreen material of the wreath represent eternal life. The circle, which has no beginning or end, “symbolizes the eternity of God, the immortality of the soul and the everlasting life we find in Christ.”

Turns out, we first started dashing through the snow for an entirely different holiday. James Lord Pierpont wrote the song “One Horse Open Sleigh” for his church’s Thanksgiving concert in the mid-19th century. Then in 1857, the song was re-released under the title we all know and love, and it’s still among the most popular Christmas songs today.

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Nine days before Christmas in 1965, astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford aboard the Gemini 6 told Mission Control that they saw an “unidentified flying object” about to enter Earth’s atmosphere, traveling in the polar orbit from north to south. Just as things got tense, they interrupted the broadcast with “Jingle Bells,” as Wally played a small harmonica accompanied by Tom shaking a handful of small sleigh bells.

We all know the same few handfuls of Christmas songs play at stores and on the radio in a loop all season long. But one of them has been adapted more than others. “Silent Night” is actually the most-recorded Christmas song in history. It’s had more than 733 different versions copyrighted since 1978.

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From 1659 to 1681, anyone caught making merry in the colonies would face a fine for celebrating. The Massachusetts Bay Colony created the Penalty for Keeping Christmas. It was thought that such “festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries” were “a great dishonor of God and offense of others.” The penalty for breaking the law was five shillings.

Even by the Revolutionary War, the day had so little significance that Congress even held their first session on December 25, 1789. Christmas wasn’t proclaimed a federal holiday for almost another century, proving that the Grinch’s attitude toward the season was alive and well long before he was.

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Although there’s no official confirmation on who invented eggnog, most historians agree that eggnog originated in medieval Britain. Eggnog was an upper-class luxury since they were the only ones who had access to the milk, sherry, and eggs required to create the original version. Monks in the Middle Ages added figs and eggs and called the drink “posset” while the wealthy kept with the simple recipe and used it for toasts or big events. Research shows that eggnog most likely became associated with the holidays due to a lack of refrigeration. It became a drink for the common man in America because of the larger farming opportunities and access to cows and chickens.

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If you’ve ever watched Clark Griswold decorate his house in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, this stat likely doesn’t shock you. In fact, the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s most recent news release estimates that 14,700 people visit hospital emergency rooms each November and December from holiday-related decorating accidents—which is about 240 injuries per day. The most common accidents involve falling, lacerations, and back strains.

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Every year, letters to Santa Claus flood post offices across the world. Cementing their amiable reputation, some big-hearted Canadian post office workers started writing back. As the program took off, they set up a special postal code for Santa as part of a Santa Letter-Writing Program initiative: HOH OHO.

Neglected, dried-out Christmas trees spark about 260 fires in the United States each year, resulting in an average of 12 deaths, 24 injuries, and $16.4 million in property damage, according to the Electrical Safety Foundation. An additional 150 fires are started because of holiday lights and other decorative lighting, resulting in an average of eight deaths, 16 injuries, and $8.9 million in property damage per year. Not only will an errant spark ruin your holiday, it can put both residents and responding firefighters in danger.

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Last year, the U.S. Postal Service processed more than 11.7 billion pieces of mail and packages during the holiday season. That includes gifts for loved ones, holiday cards, Christmas letters to Santa and, of course, those dreaded credit card bills from all the gift shopping.

Contrary to popular belief, “Xmas” is not a trendy attempt to “take Christ out of Christmas.”

“Christianity” was spelled “Xianity” as far back as 1100. X, or Chi, is the Greek first letter of Christ, and back in the fourth century, Constantine the Great often referenced the shorthand version. Some say it was as early as 1021 that the abbreviation “XPmas” was used to reference the holiday, which was later shortened to “Xmas.”