Fun Facts About Merry Christmas (We MUST Know...)

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!

100 amazing & unknown facts!

# Our eyes remain the same size from birth onward, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

# The Barbie doll’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.

# The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.

# Ants never sleep!

# When the moon is directly overhead, you will weigh slightly less.

# Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never called his wife or mother because they were both deaf.

# An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

# “I Am” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

# Babies are born without knee caps – actually, they’re made of cartilage and the bone hardens between the ages of 2 and 6 years.

# Happy Birthday (the song) is copyrighted.

# Butterflies taste with their feet.

# A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.

# It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

# Leonardo Da Vinci invented the scissors.

# Minus 40 degrees Celsius is exactly the same as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

# No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.

# Shakespeare invented the words “assassination” and “bump.”

# Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.

# Elephants are the only animals that cannot jump.

# The names of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.

# The sentence, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter in the English language.

# The shortest war in history was between Zanzibar and England in 1896. Zanzibar surrendered after 38 minutes.

# The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

# The word “lethologica” describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

# Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from the blowing desert sand.

# TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters on only one row of the keyboard.

# You can’t kill yourself by holding your breath.

# Money isn’t made out of paper. It’s made out of cotton.

# Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.

# The dot over the letter “i” is called a tittle.

# A duck’s quack doesn’t echo. No one knows why!

# The “spot” on the 7-Up comes from its inventor who had red eyes – he was an albino. ’7′ was because the original containers were 7 ounces and ‘UP’ indicated the direction of the bubbles.

# Chocolate can kill dogs, as it contains theobromine, which affects their heart and nervous system.

# Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of plaster.

# There are only two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: “abstemious” and “facetious.”

# If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

# Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow film down so you could see his moves.

# The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

# By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.

# Dogs and cats, like humans, are either right or left handed.

# Charlie Chaplin once won the third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

# Sherlock Holmes NEVER said “Elementary, my dear Watson”.

# The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.

# Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

# The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F is “feedback.”

# All Polar bears are left-handed.

# In England, the Speaker of the House is not allowed to speak.

# “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt.”

# Almonds are a member of the peach family, and apples belong to the rose family.

# Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.

# The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is “uncopyrightable”.

# In most advertisements, the time displayed on a watch is 10:10

# Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

# Alfred Nobel, in whose name the Nobel prizes are instituted, was the inventor of dynamite.

# The planet Venus does not tilt, so consequently, it has no seasons. It is the only planet that rotates clock-wise.

# Honey is the only food that doesn’t spoil.

# The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

# Molecularly speaking, water is actually much drier than sand.

# Human tonsils can bounce higher than a rubber ball of similar weight and size, but only for the first 30 minutes after they’ve been removed.

# US President John F. Kennedy was an accomplished ventriloquist.

# Coca-Cola was originally green.

# Moths are unable to fly during an earthquake.

# Contrary to popular belief, the white is not the healthiest part of an egg. It’s actually the shell.

# Nearly three percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine.

# Hot water will turn into ice faster then cold water.

# “Rhythm” is the longest English word without a vowel.

# Like fingerprints, every person’s tongue print is different.

# No piece of normal-size paper can be folded in half more than 7 times.

# The tongue is the only muscle that is attached from one end only.

# Pumice is the only rock that floats in water.

# Camel’s milk does not curdle.

# Your foot is the same length as your forearm, and your thumb is the same length as your nose. Also, the length of your lips is the same as the index finger.

# Natural pearls melt in vinegar.

# Buttermilk does not contain any butter.

# The human brain is 80% water.

# Men’s shirts have the buttons on the right while women’s shirts have the buttons on the left.

# Human fingernails grow nearly 4 times faster than toenails.

# The Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt holds a constant temperature of 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

# The liquid inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.

# Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are fifty years of age.

# It takes approximately 2 million flowers for a bee to make 1 pound of honey.

# Human saliva has a boiling point three times that of regular water.

# It is physically impossible to urinate and give blood at the same time.

# The letter J does not appear anywhere in the periodic table of the elements.

# The right lung of a human is larger than the left one. This is because of the space and placement of the heart.

# Watermelons, which are 92% water, originated from the Kalahari Desert in Africa.

# The hair of some cancer patients treated with chemotherapy can grow back in a different colour, and sometimes even be curly or straight.

# The markings that are found on dice are called “pips.”

# 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321

# The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.

# Leonardo Da Vinci never signed or dated his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa.

# The ampersand (&) was the last letter of the Latin alphabet.

# The palms of your hands and the soles of your feet cannot tan, or grow hair.

# Dolphins can swim and sleep at the same time, as they sleep with one eye open.

# Each nostril of a human being registers smell in a different way. Those by the right nostril are more pleasant than the left.

# The longest single-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”

# The word “Checkmate” in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah-Mat,” which means “the king is dead”.

# Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history:  Spades – King David, Clubs – Alexander the Great, Hearts – Charlemagne, and Diamonds – Julius Caesar.

# In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift described the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, giving their exact size and speeds of rotation. He did this more than 100 years before either moon was discovered!

# If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural causes.

Here are some more:

If you weighed all the electrons used to store the information on the internet, it would weight less than a chicken’s egg.

Paul Walker Dead in Fiery Car Crash Photos

In this tragic photograph actor Paul Walker, best known for his role in the Fast & Furious action movies, is seen stepping into his friend Roger Rodas’ Porsche GT just moments before the horrendous crash in which the pair lost their lives.

Paul Walker Dead Body

Actor Paul Walker — a self-styled adrenaline junkie best known for his role in “The Fast and the Furious” movies — was killed Saturday in a fiery single-car wreck in Southern California.

The 40-year-old Walker was riding with his friend Roger Rodas’  in a red Porsche GT about 3:30 p.m. when the sports car flew off the road and slammed into a tree in Santa Clarita, authorities and witnesses said.

Inspirational Stories #128 - Aesop's tales # 13 - A Man and his two Wives

In the old days, when men were allowed to have many wives, a middle-aged Man had one wife that was old and one that was young; each loved him very much, and desired to see him like herself.

 

Now the Man's hair was turning grey, which the young Wife did not like, as it made him look too old for her husband. So every night she used to comb his hair and pick out the white ones. But the elder Wife saw her husband growing grey with great pleasure, for she did not like to be mistaken for his mother. So every morning she used to arrange his hair and pick out as many of the black ones as she could. The consequence was the Man soon found himself entirely bald.

Moral: Yield to all and you will soon have nothing to yield.

Inspirational Stories #127 - Aesop's tales # 12 - The Rivers and the Sea

The Rivers joined together to complain to the Sea, saying, "Why is it that when we flow into your tides so potable and sweet, you work in us such a change, and make us salty and unfit to drink?"

The Sea, perceiving that they intended to throw the blame on him, said, "Pray cease to flow into me, and then you will not be made briny."

Moral: Don't blame others for a situation caused by you.