Christmas Trivia Bits 25 December
- The first Christmas celebrated in Britain is thought to have been in
York in 521AD.
- On Christmas Day in 2008 almost 39,000 copies of
iFart, a flatulance simulation software app, were downloaded.
- Animal Cracker's were introduced at
Christmastime in 1902 with the carrying string on the box designed so it could
be hung on a Christmas Tree.
- In 1769 the crew of Captain Cook's 'Endeavour'
celebrated Christmas in the Pacific with a goose pie and "all hands as
drunk as our forefathers used to be upon like occasion."
- The first Christmas cards printed in the United
States were sent by businesses to their customers in the 1850s with Pease's
Great Variety Store in Albany, New York one of the first stores to use this
form of advertising..
- In 1213, England's King John (1166-1216) ordered
3,000 capons, 1,000 salted eels, 400 hogs, 100 pounds of almonds, and 24 casks
of wine for his Christmas festivities.
- First published in 1892, in The Adventure of the Blue
Carbuncle by Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes investigates the mystery
of a Christmas goose that swallowed a jewel.
- From 1931 to 1964 annual Coca-Cola ads became a
Christmas tradition after commissioning in 1931 artist Haddon Sundblom to show
Santa drinking a Coke to encourage sales in the winter months., which helped
reinforce the modern American image of Santa Claus as a rotund, jolly and
bearded man, dressed in a red outfit trimmed in white fur with a broad black
belt and black boots.
- Charlie Rich had a number one hit with The Most Beautiful Girl in the World on
the country charts during Christmas 1973.
- Every elf has an ornament of bells on the tip of their shoes.
- The song White
Christmas was written by Irving Berlin and sung by Bing Crosby in the 1942
movie Holiday Inn which he also sang
it in the 1954 movie White Christmas with
the song has sold more than 100 million copies world wide and is the best
selling Christmas song of all time.
- In Australia, Father Christmas uses six white
boomers, male kangaroos, to pull his sleigh giving the reindeer a well earnt
break.
- The Greeks celebrate Christmas on January 7,
according to the old Julian calendar, while Christmas presents are opened on
New Year's Day.
- The four ghosts in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol are Christmas Past,
Christmas Present, Christmas Yet to Come, and Jacob Marley.
- There is no reference to angels singing anywhere
in the Bible.
- Two of the reindeers are named after weather
phenomenon - Donner, which means thunder in German, and Blitzen, which means
lightning.
- The London Christmas period of 1813 - 14 saw the
last Christmas Fair on a frozen River Thames, known as a Frost Fair.
- Hanging stockings out comes from the Dutch
custom of leaving shoes packed with food for St Nicholas's donkeys and he would
leave small gifts in return.
- The word Noel derives from the French expression
les bonnes nouvelles or the good news.
- English Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell banned
Christmas between 1647 and 1660 because he believed such celebrations were
immoral for the holiest day of the year.
- The first singing radio commercial, which aired
in the US on Christmas Eve 1926, was for Wheaties.
- The Christmas tree displayed in Trafalgar square
in London is an annual gift to the UK from Norway since 1947. The Norwegian
spruce given is a token of appreciation of British friendship during World War
II from the Norwegian people
- Charles Dickens' initial choice for Scrooge's
statement Bah Humbug was Bah Christmas.
- In 2004, the German post office gave away 20
million scented stickers free to make Christmas cards smell like a fir
Christmas tree, cinnamon, gingerbread, or a honey-wax candle
- The name of toy, Yo-yo, popular since Christmas
1929, translated means come-come or come-back.
- In 1580, the Christmas feasts of Sir William
Petrie included 17 oxen, 14 steers, 29 calves, 5 hogs, 13 bucks, 54 lambs, 129
sheep and one ton of cheese.
- An advertisement in 1910 for Ivory Soap showed a
child waiting for Santa Claus in front of a fireplace with a bowl of water, a
towel and a bar of Ivory soap so Santa could wash up after coming down the
sooty chimney.
- In 354 A.D. Pope Liberius designated December 25
as the official date of Christmas.
- You should stir mincemeat clockwise for good
luck.
- Lucy asks Schroeder to play Jingle
Bells on his piano in the 1965 TV Special A Charlie Brown Christmas.
- Yorkshireman William Strickland is believed to have brought the first
Turkey to Britain from North America in 1526.
- In the song I
Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus underneath the mistletoe, mommy tickled Santa
Claus Underneath his beard so snowy white
with the original recording by Jimmy Boyd, recorded on July 15, 1952 when he
was 13 years old.
- In India, the world's seventh largest by
geographical area, Christmas known as Bada Din - the big day.
- The Christmas slogan introduced by Clarissa
Baldwin of Dogs Trust in 1978 was A Dog Is For Life, Not Just For Christmas.
- The most popular toy in 1893 – 1985 were unique
and no two exactly alike being the Cabbage Patch Dolls.
- Popular Christmas song, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, originally recorded by Judy
Garland, was first heard in the 1944 musical Meet Me In St. Louis.
- Band-Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas was the
UK Christmas chart-topping record in 1984, Band Aid 2 1989 and Band Aid 20 in
2004.
- In the 1995 movie Babe, Farmer Hoggett and his
wife receive a fax machine as a Christmas gift from their son for Christmas.
- Born on Christmas Day 1949, Sissy Spacek (pictured), the
cousin of actor Rip Torn, went onto play the title roles in Carrie and a Coalminers Daughter.
- In the 1990 film Die Hard 2, it was at the airport Dulles International Airport in Washington
DC that the terrorist take over on Christmas Eve.
- According to legend, what special task King
Arthur performed one Christmas Day was to pull the sword from the stone.
- In North America, NORAD, North American Radar
and Defense, is always the first to spot that Santa is underway.
- Legend has it, whilst poking at a fire in 1847,
the London-based sweet shop owner Tom Smith got the inspiration to make the
Christmas dinner accessory, Christmas Crackers.
- Bill & Hilary Clinton switched on the
Christmas tree lights in Belfast in 1995.
- When
Saigon fell in 1975, the signal for all Americans to evacuate was the song White
Christmas by Bing Crosby being played on the radio.
- Traditionally, after kissing someone under the
mistletoe, you should then remove one of the berries for good luck.
- Cliff Richard’s single Mistletoe and Wine was at number one over Christmas in the UK in 1988.
- The Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street has been remade many times and Edmund Gwenn
won a best supporting actor Oscar for the role of Kris Kringle in the original
1947 film and which two time Oscar winner Richard Attenborough played Kris in
the 1994 remake.
- According to CBS, the 1964 animated story Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is the
longest running holiday special in TV history, the one where Rudolph and Hermey
the elf, who would rather be a dentist, run away from Christmas Town.
- The Christmas tradition of gingerbread houses probably stems from the German composer Engelbert Humperdinck’s 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel in which the witches house is made of gingerbread and covered in sweets and icing.
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