Have you ever wondered about some
of the things we see and embrace at Christmas? We know that Christmas is the
day we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. That story is familiar to us all,
and embraced by billions around the world.
But what about some of the other
things—like Christmas trees and stockings and Santa? And just how many people
on Earth celebrate Christmas, anyway?
Here are a few “did you know”
kind of things that intrigued me:
1. The French gave the biggest Christmas
present ever in 1886. It was the Statue of Liberty, and they gave it to the
United States of America. (The French have one too, a smaller one, in Paris.)
2. Santa Claus was a real Saint.
He lived in Myra in the 300s. Myra is in what’s now Turkey. The German name for
Saint Nicholas is Sankt Niklaus.
3. The first artificial
Christmas Tree wasn’t a tree at all. It was created out of goose feathers
that were dyed.
4. Christmas has many, many
names. Do you know some of them—aside from, of course, Christmas? How
about?Sheng Tan Kuai Loh (China), or Hauskaa Joulua (Finland),
or Joyeux Noel (France)? In Wales, it’s Nadolig Llawen,
and in Sweden, God Jul. You can read more names for Christmas
athttp://www.rochedalss.eq.edu.au/xmas/world1.htm .
5. That “Xmas” stems from
Greece. The Greek “X” is a symbol for Christ.
6. Riga, Latvia was home to the
first decorated Christmas tree. The year was 1510. About 36 million
Christmas trees are produced each year on Christmas tree farms.
7. The Candy Cane is one of the
most familiar symbols of Christmas. It dates back to 1670 in Europe but
didn’t appear in the U.S. until the 1800s. The treat we see today, where the
shape is Jesus’s hook to shepherd his lambs and the color and stripes hold
significance for purity and Christ’s sacrifice, became common in the mid 1900s.
8. The Christmas Stocking got
its start when three unmarried girls did their laundry and hung their stockings
on the chimney to dry. They couldn’t marry, they had no dowry. But St.
Nicholas, who knew of their plight, put a sack of gold in each stocking and in
the morning the girls awoke to discover they had dowry’s. They could marry.
9. An estimated 1 of 3 people
worldwide celebrate Christmas, including 2.1 Billion Christians. There
are about 7,038,044,500 people in the world, so about 23,460,148 celebrate
Christmas.
10. The most popular
Christmas Song ever is We Wish You a Merry Christmas. The
song can be traced back to England, but its author and composer remains
unknown.
11. December 25 was originally a
pagan celebration. Nobody knows when Jesus of Nazareth was born and
nobody celebrated his birthday for hundreds of years. December 25 was co-opted
from pagan rites connected with the winter solstice.
12. The nativity story resulted
in several wars. In the first few centuries of the Christian era,
controversy over whether or not Jesus was divine at birth created political and
social unrest that frequently burst out into full-scale warfare.
13. Mistletoe kissing originated
with fertility rites. The hanging sprig is a very ancient symbol of
virility and therefore anybody standing beneath it is signaling that he or she
is sexually available.
14. Santa Claus originated in a
newspaper ad. Far from being a quaint medieval legend, Santa Claus
first appeared as a recognizable entity was in a newspaper ad for toys and
"gift books" in the mid 19th century.
15. Christmas is only recently a
"family" holiday. Christmas was originally celebrated as an
adult form of "trick or treat," but with the "treat"
consisting of booze and the threatened "trick" consisting of bodily
harm or destruction of property.
16. "We Wish You a Merry
Christmas" was originally a threat. The ever-popular song was
originally sung, loudly and repeatedly, by crowds of rowdy, lower-class
servants demanding booze from their masters... or else. (I.e.
"We won't go until we get some!")
17. The Christmas Tree is
a manufactured tradition. Victorian intellectuals (like Clement Moore)
invented the tradition as part of a social movement to consciously reform
Christmas away from its tradition of raucous drinking.
18. Scrooge does not celebrate
with the Cratchits. While most cinema versions of "A Christmas
Carol" show the reformed miser celebrating with his lower-class employee,
in the book, Scrooge celebrates instead with his middle-class nephew.
19. Christmas as a "day
off" is a recent innovation. As late as 1850, December 25 was not
a legal holiday in New England, so stores were open, business were open, and
children were expected to attend school.
20. "The 12 Days of
Christmas" costs about $1.3 million. The big challenge is getting the
lords to leap in unison. I figure about $100k per lord, with an extra
$100k to cover the birds, rings, milkmaids, and so forth.
Merry Christmas, Everyone!
