Christmas is celebrated all over the world, as both a religious and secular holiday. For Christians, this annual day is celebrated to remember the birth of Jesus. Gifts are given, holiday cards sent, carols sung, and special church services attended. The Christmas holiday season is viewed by many as a secular holiday filled with traditions. Many of our Christmas traditions have interesting origins. In this article, we will look at all kinds of Christmas facts, some humorous, some historical, and some just plain fun. Use our Christmas facts as icebreakers or conversation starters at parties, to challenge your friends, or to use in holiday conversations to make them more interesting. Have fun!
Table of Contents
Interesting Facts About Christmas
Christmas celebrations occur all over the world, although the day on which it is celebrated varies, as well as the decorations, food, and customs. Many of the origins of Christmas and its “factual” past can be contradictory, so you may find some surprises in our list of interesting facts about Christmas. Check to see how many facts in our list you already knew and then test your family and friends.
Historical Christmas Facts
- 1066 – King William I of England was crowned on Christmas Day.
- 1377 – During a Christmas feast hosted by King Richard II of England, three hundred sheep and twenty-eight oxen were consumed.
- 1640 – Scotland abolished the observance of Christmas. It did not become a legal holiday again until 1958.
- Franklin Pierce (1853-1857) is believed to have been the first U.S. President to put a Christmas tree in the White House.
- Christmas trees were banned by President Teddy Roosevelt in the White House in 1901 because he was concerned about environmental effects, but his sons decorated a small tree cut on the White House grounds and hid it in a closet until Christmas morning.
- 1915 – Hallmark introduced their first Christmas cards.
- Boston, Massachusetts receives a tree from Nova Scotia, Canada each year in thanks for Boston’s aid after the 1917 Halifax Explosion.
- London receives a Christmas tree for Trafalgar Square from Oslo, Norway every year to thank Britain for assistance during World War II.
- During World War II, the Bicycle playing card company made decks with hidden escape maps revealed when soaked in water. They were sent to Allied prisoners as Christmas gifts.
- 1962 – The United States issued its first Christmas postage stamp.
- In Japan, a unique modern tradition is to eat KFC on Christmas Eve. Preorders can sell out days in advance.
Christmas Tree Facts
- It is believed Germany began the tradition of the Christmas tree. Additionally, tinsel, which was once made of silver, is traced to 1610 in Germany.
- Christmas trees are grown in all 50 U.S. states, but California, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin are the top producers.
- Christmas trees have been sold in the United States since 1850.
- Every year, Europeans decorate about 50 million live Christmas trees and the United States about 35 million.
- It takes on average 6 to 8 years for a Christmas tree to be fully grown, but it can take as long as 15 years.
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil has one of the largest floating Christmas trees in the world. It has reached 278 feet tall.
- The tallest living Christmas tree in America is a 161 foot tree in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The star on top is 10 feet tall.
- Eco tip – many cities offer tree recycling or mulching programs after the holidays to turn trees into compost or park mulch.
Christmas Food and Drink Facts
- A “grog” is any drink made with rum. The egg, cream, nutmeg, and rum drink “eggnog” has early American roots, with references dating to the 1600s.
- Each year, approximately 10 million Christmas turkeys are eaten in the U.K. and 22 million in the United States.
- Today, wassail is hot apple cider with honey and spices, but in the Middle Ages it was made with wine, ale, or hard cider topped with stale bread or beaten eggs. Neighbors would visit on Christmas Eve and drink to each other’s health.
- One festive meal can easily top 7,000 calories when you add the turkey, dressing, potatoes, sides, pie, rolls, and drinks.
- Animal cracker boxes first added strings around Christmas in 1902 so they could be hung on trees as ornaments.
- Sugar plums were spiced dried fruits rolled into balls and coated with chocolate or hard sugar.
- Fruitcakes last a long time by design. Sugar and alcohol preserve them, and some recipes are baked at harvest time for the next year’s celebration.
- An Italian American favorite for Christmas Eve is the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a multi course seafood dinner.
Christmas Facts About Santa and His Reindeer
- Early images of St. Nicholas show a stern figure. Washington Irving popularized the idea of a flying sleigh in 1819, and cartoonist Thomas Nast shaped the modern Santa in Harper’s Weekly in the 1860s.
- St. Nicholas lived in the province of Lycia in the 4th century A.D. The Dutch name Sinterklaas became “Santa Claus” in English. Other names include La Befana in Italy, Ded Moroz in Russia, Kris Kringle in Germany, and Père Noël in France.
- Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was created by the Montgomery Ward department store for a 1939 giveaway storybook. Early drafts avoided a bright red nose to steer clear of any alcohol association.
- Clement Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” listed eight reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder and Blixem. These later evolved into Donner and Blitzen. Despite the masculine names, reindeer that keep their antlers in winter are usually female.
- Leaving food for Santa has Norse roots. Children left treats for Odin’s horse Sleipnir. Today American kids often leave cookies and milk, while others leave hay, carrots, and water for the reindeer.
- Icelandic folklore has 13 Yule Lads who visit on the 13 nights before Christmas, each with a different mischievous personality.
Facts About Christmas Songs, Books, and Movies
- “Jingle Bells,” originally “One Horse Open Sleigh,” was written by James Pierpont in Massachusetts as a Thanksgiving song. It was the first song broadcast from space on December 15, 1965.
- All of the items in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” total 364 gifts.
- Brenda Lee was only 13 when she recorded “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” in 1958.
- Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was written in six weeks. IMDB lists hundreds of adaptations, including many loose retellings.
- In Dublin in 1742, Handel’s Christmas oratorio The Messiah was first performed.
- Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is among the best selling singles of all time with more than 50 million copies sold worldwide.
- Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has returned to number one multiple holiday seasons and has become a modern standard.
Religious Christmas Facts
- “Xmas” comes from the Greek letter Chi, the first letter of Christ in Greek, and has been used for centuries.
- Old English provided the word Christmas from Cristes mæsse, which means “Christ Mass.”
- A Christmas wreath with holly symbolizes the crown of thorns and the blood Jesus shed.
- The Bible indicates a plurality of wise men, but tradition says three, likely because three gifts are named: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
- The three traditional colors of Christmas have symbolism. Red represents the blood of Jesus, green symbolizes eternal life and resurrection, and gold signifies kingship.
- Christmas is not commanded in the Bible. Many customs associated with the season draw from winter solstice festivities and local traditions.
- The New Testament accounts of Jesus’s birth appear in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
- The Latin word natalis, meaning “day of birth,” is the origin of the word Noel.
Fun Facts About Christmas
- About $1,000 is spent on Christmas gifts each year by the average American family.
- In 1836 Alabama was the first U.S. state to set Christmas as a legal holiday, and in 1907 Oklahoma was the last.
- Children who write letters to Santa Claus in the United States often receive responses through Santa Claus, Indiana.
- Sir Henry Cole of London is credited with selling the first commercial Christmas card in 1843.
- Over three billion Christmas cards are sold each year in the U.K. and the U.S.
- Many people think Black Friday is the busiest U.S. shopping day, but the Friday and Saturday before Christmas often take the crown.
- Prince Albert, the German born husband of Queen Victoria, helped popularize the Christmas tree in Britain in the mid nineteenth century.
- The Rubik’s Cube, a top Christmas toy in 1980, sold for about $1.99 at launch and now sells for much more.
- The custom of stockings likely grew from Dutch children leaving shoes with treats for St. Nicholas’s horse and receiving small gifts in return.
- The U.S. Postal Service delivers billions of pieces of holiday mail, including hundreds of millions of packages, each season.
- Nuremberg’s Christkindlesmarkt, first held in 1570, is one of Europe’s oldest and largest Christmas markets.
- Roughly 28 LEGO sets are sold every second during the Christmas season.
- More than 1.7 billion candy canes are made each year.
- One estimate suggested Americans would spend hundreds of billions of dollars during the holiday season. If spent entirely on U.S. made products, it could support millions of jobs.
- During peak days of the season, shoppers use their credit cards thousands of times per minute.
Funny Christmas Facts
Some Christmas facts tickle our funny bones or make us smile, such as the fact that the first artificial Christmas tree branches were made by a toilet brush company. We have this and other funny facts about Christmas to tickle your funny bone and help you be the life of the party. Enjoy the following list of funny Christmas facts.
- If you are really into recycling, you can eat parts of your Christmas tree. Pine needles contain vitamin C, and some zoos feed trees to certain animals after the holidays.
- Santa’s elves can be traced back to the “nature folk” of pagan religions.
- Mistletoe was an ancient symbol of fertility and vitality. Standing beneath it signaled availability for a kiss.
- Ukrainian Christmas trees often include a spider and web ornament for good luck.
- Letters to Santa addressed with the Canadian postal code H0H 0H0 are routed to a special program that replies to children in many languages.
- People used to tell scary ghost stories on Christmas Eve a century ago.
- In the 1800s, artificial trees were made from dyed goose feathers or green raffia.
- The Addis Brush Company used toilet brush machines to make sturdy, non flammable artificial tree branches that held heavy ornaments.
- In 1955, a misprinted Sears ad listed the NORAD hotline instead of a Santa line, leading to the ongoing NORAD Santa Tracker tradition.
- December 25 to January 5 is “Christmastide” or the “Twelve Holy Days,” the inspiration for “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
- Denny’s restaurants in the United States originally stayed open 24 hours and some had no locks. When they decided to close on Christmas Day in 1988, several locations discovered their doors could not be locked.
- The Internet lists dozens of funny Christmas songs, including “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” and many parodies.
- Ugly Christmas sweaters are a thriving niche, with millions of dollars spent annually on intentionally tacky designs.
Whether you are looking for a little known fact to share with friends or to start a conversation at a party, or a funny Christmas fact to make people laugh, this article will give you a perfect Christmas fact for any occasion. Test yourself and others to see how much Christmas trivia is known already. Have fun!
Susan majored in English with a double minor in Humanities and Business at Arizona State University and earned a Master’s degree in Educational Administration from Liberty University. She taught grades four through twelve in both public and private schools. Subjects included English, U.S. and world history and geography, math, earth and physical science, Bible, information technologies, and creative writing.
Susan has been freelance writing for over ten years, during which time she has written and edited books, newspaper articles, biographies, book reviews, guidelines, neighborhood descriptions for realtors, Power Point presentations, resumes, and numerous other projects.
