A lot of facts about Christmas is known but here are 15 facts that will get you thinking and laughing…
• Early illustrations of St. Nicholas make him out to be a stern symbol of discipline rather than the jolly, overweight elf that children know today
• All letters addressed to Santa in the United States go to Santa Claus, Indiana
• Engineers that designed the Voyager Space Mission planned things out so it would avoid planetary encounters during Thanksgiving and Christmas
• There is a village in Peru where people settle the previous year’s grudges by fist fighting. They then start the new year off on a clean slate
Telling scary ghost stories is an old Christmas Eve tradition that has died out in the past century
• Some zoos accept donated Christmas trees as food for their animals
• It is estimated the song White Christmas by Irving Berlin is the best selling single in history with over 100 million copies sold
• Paul McCartney earns nearly half a million dollars every year from his Christmas song, which many critics regards as his worst song ever
• A large part of Sweden’s population watches Donald Duck cartoons every Christmas Eve since 1960
• During the Christmas of 2010, the Colombian government covered jungle trees with lights. When FARC guerrillas (terrorists) walked by, the trees lit up and banners asking them to lay down their arms became visible. 331 guerrillas re-entered society and the campaign won an award for strategic marketing excellence
• Nearly all of the most popular Christmas songs including Winter Wonderland and I’m Dreaming of a white Christmas were written by Jewish people
• Between the 16th and 19th centuries was what is known as a ‘little ice age’ where global temperatures were several degrees lower than normal. It is for this reason that many Christmas carols and songs stress a White Christmas
• The Nazi party tried to turn Christmas into a non religious holiday celebrating the coming of Hitler, with Saint Nicholas replaced by Odin the ‘Solstice Man’ and swastikas on top of Christmas trees
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