We all know Christmas as the holiday with all the presents and lights. We know all the songs and stories, but that is just the start of Christmas! There are many interesting things you probably don’t know about this December holiday. I bet you didn’t know that over 3,000,000,000 (three billion) Christmas cards are sent in the U.S. alone. Not only is that a lot of cards, but there are only about 300,000,000 (three hundred million) Americans! Ho-ho-hold your horses, because that is just the beginning!
The Christmas Tree
The Christmas tree is one of the most common icons of Christmas. Christmas trees are usually decorated with lights, ornaments and a star on top, but did you know that the earliest tree decorations were apples, and in Poland Christmas trees are commonly decorated with spider webs?! That’s not all there is to the Christmas tree, though!
The first artificial Christmas tree was made by the Germans, using dyed goose feathers. While the most common Christmas tree is about 7 feet tall, according to the Guinness World Records, the tallest Christmas tree ever was a 221-foot Douglas fir. (To give you some perspective, the Rockefeller Center tree is 71-feet tall this year.) Christmas trees have been sold in the U.S. since 1850, but Christmas trees don’t just ‘poof’ up, they have to grow for about 15 years before they are sold. That’s no problem though. There are over 20,000 Christmas tree farms in the U.S., and because of that approximately 30 million living trees are sold each year. It is said that the first Christmas tree in the White House could have been as early as 1856. Later, in 1912, President Teddy Roosevelt, an environmentalist, banned the Christmas tree from the White House.
Where Did Christmas Come From?
We all know about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus, and the elves; but you probably didn’t know how everything started. For example you might not have known that the word “Christmas” is a contraction of “Christ’s Mass”, or that the abbreviation “Xmas” is used because in Greek the first letter of Christ is “X”. But wait, there’s still more!
Did you know that Santa’s elves are based on good and evil spirits that were active during the Twelve Days of Christmas? Also, Norwegian scientists have hypothesized that Rudolph’s red nose is probably the result of a parasitic infection of his respiratory system. Another one of Christmas’s representatives are the Christmas colors; red, green, and gold. Red was chosen because it symbolizes the blood of Christ, green is used because it is a symbol of life and rebirth, and finally gold represents light, wealth, and loyalty. Usually around Christmas stockings are hung over the fireplace, we do this because three sisters who were very poor were saved by Bishop Saint Nicholas of Smyrna, the precursor to Santa Claus, who crept down their chimney and generously filled their stockings with gold coins.
So next time you see Christmas decorations or a Christmas tree with your friends, surprise them with an interesting Christmas fact!
All information from http://facts.randomhistory.com/christmas-facts.html