Little Known Facts

 

Last updated 12/26/2017 at 3:04pm



If you need a conversation starter this holiday season here are a few Christmas facts you may not know.

1. Christmas supposedly marks the birth of Jesus Christ on December 25. But there is no mention of December 25 in the Bible and most historians believe he was born in the spring.

2. These evergreen branches became the foundation of our Christmas tree. It is thought that Germans are the first to bring "Christmas trees" into their homes at the holidays and decorate them with cookies and lights.

3. Santa Claus comes from St. Nicholas, a Christian bishop living in (what is now Turkey) in the fourth century AD. St. Nicholas had inherited a great deal of wealth and was known for giving it away to help the needy.

4. Stockings come from this story: A poor man with three daughters couldn't afford the dowry to have them married. One night, St. Nicholas dropped a bag of gold down the man's chimney so that his oldest daughter would be able to get married, and the bag fell into a stocking that was drying by the fire.


5. The look of Santa Claus we have today was created at an 1804 meeting of the New York Historical Society, where member John Pintard handed out wooden cutouts of jolly old St. Nick on front of stockings filled with toys.

6. Though Santa Claus has worn blue and white and green in the past, his traditional red suit came from a 1930s ad by Coca Cola.

7. The image of Santa Claus flying in a sleigh started in 1819 and was dreamt up by Washington Irving the same author who created the Headless Horseman.

8. Rudolph was almost named Rollo or Reginald. Reginald the Red-Nosed Reindeer doesn't quite have the same ring to it.


9. Rudolph was actually conceived by a department store, Montgomery Ward, as a marketing gimmick to get kids to buy holiday coloring books.

10. "Silent Night" is the most recorded Christmas song in history, with over 733 different versions copyrighted since 1978.

 

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