Bucks Advent Calendar: Monday 18 December – Did you know…?
News
Date: 18th Dec 2017
15 facts ‘yule’ love about Christmas…
- Germany made the first artificial Christmas tree out of goose feathers dyed green.
- Electric lights for Christmas trees were first used in 1895.
- It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) appears on TV more often than any other holiday movie.
- Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer first appeared in a 1939 booklet written by Robert L. May and published by Montgomery Ward, the US department store.
- In Greek, X means Christ, which is how the word ‘X-mas’ came to be.
- Prince Albert brought the Christmas tree to England. He and Queen Victoria were sketched in front of a Christmas tree and the tradition instantly became popular.
- The largest Christmas cracker - 45.72m long and 3.04m in diameter - was pulled in Australia in 1991.
- Santa Claus comes from St. Nicholas, a Christian bishop living in Turkey in the 4th century AD. St Nicholas inherited a lot of money and so gave it away to help the needy. When sainted, he became the protector of children.
- One of the reasons we leave milk and cookies for Santa is because Dutch kids would leave food and drink for St. Nicholas on his feast day.
- Santa Claus has worn blue and white and green in the past, but his traditional red suit came from a 1930s ad by Coca Cola.
- US scientists calculated that Father Christmas would have to visit 822 homes a second to deliver all the presents on Christmas Eve – that’s travelling 650 miles a second.
- 12th-century French nuns left socks full of fruit, nuts and tangerines at the houses of the poor – that’s where the tradition of tangerines in your stocking come from.
- Silent Night is the most recorded Christmas song in history, with over 733 different versions copyrighted since 1978. The version sung by Bing Crosby is the third best-selling single of all-time.
- Meanwhile, Bing’s ‘White Christmas’ is the best-selling song of all time.
- Home Alone (1990) is the highest-grossing Christmas movie of all time pulling in $285.76 million.
