Christmas Facts

1. Silent Night was written because a church organ had broken and the congregation needed a carol that could be sung to a guitar accompaniment.

2. Christmas trees are known to have been popular in Germany as far back as the sixteenth century. In England, they became popular after Queen Victoria’s husband Albert, who came from Germany, made a tree part of the celebrations at Windsor Castle. In the United States, the earliest known mention of a Christmas tree is in the diary of a German who settled in Pennsylvania.

3. Sending red Christmas cards to anyone in Japan constitutes bad etiquette, since funeral notices there are customarily printed in red.

4. Electric Christmas tree lights were first used in 1895. The idea for using electric Christmas lights came from an American, Ralph E. Morris. The new lights proved safer than the traditional candles.

5. In Britain, the Holy Days and Fasting Days Act of 1551, which has not yet been repealed, states that every citizen must attend a Christian church service on Christmas Day, and must not use any kind of vehicle to get to the service.

6. Forty percent of American adults said they expect to gain weight during the winter holiday season. Out of those, about 60 percent said following Christmas and New Year’s Day, they would return to their original weight.

7. The “X” in Xmas is actually the Greek letter “Chi” which is the first letter of the Greek spelling of Christ. That’s actually how the abbreviation of the word “Christmas” started, not because someone took the “Christ” out of Christmas.

8. An average household in America will mail out 28 Christmas cards each year and see 28 eight cards return in their place.

9. During the Christmas buying season, Visa cards alone are used an average of 5,340 times every minute in the United States.

10. “Rudolph” was actually created by Montgomery Ward in the late 1930’s for a holiday promotion. The rest is history.

11. According to the National Christmas Tree Association, Americans buy 37.1 million real Christmas trees each year; 25 percent of them are from the nation’s 5,000 choose-and-cut farms.

12. More people prefer Brussels Sprouts than Christmas Pudding! What are they putting in those Brussels Sprouts? And the pudding?