24 Facts You Didn't Know About Christmas - Why Christmas?

Christmas is the time to indulge in the festive spirit and unleash the the jovial and the merry one within you. But there are other ways to enjoy this season too. Below is given a compendium of reflective quotes that you will surely love to browse through. So read on and please feel free to forward these Christmas quotations to your friends. It would also be a good idea to copy the quotes and send it with a Christmas greeting card.

Here are some Christmas related facts that will arouse your interest :

  1. During the auspicious Christmas time many of the pet owners think their pet as human beings. It is noticed that almost 56 percent of Americans sing to their pets.

  2. During Yuletide season people sell foil and make considerable money at Reynolds et al. It is a fact that more than 3000 tons of foils are used yearly to wrap the Turkeys.

  3. If you are interested to go for a Christmas shopping, then it’s a word to remember. Statistics reveal that you are going to be elbowed thrice if not more while shopping.

  4. Most of us have made it a tradition to send Christmas cards to our friends. If we consider Americans, then it is true that they send 28 cards on average annually to their near and dear ones. Most of the Americans will also receive 28 cards yearly as well.

  5. Scraps of Christmas can make problems for you many times. The Christmas scraps are responsible for 400,000 cases of disease and sickness after the Christmas time.

  6. Listen to the song "Twelve Days of Christmas" and count the number of gifts in the song. You will realize that gifts were exchanged 364 times. Thus the gifts are exchanged everyday of the year.

  7. Oliver Cornwell, the leader, stopped the celebration of Christmas during 1647- 1660. According to him it was immoral to celebrate the holiest day of the year. It was a criminal offence. He or she could find him or her behind the bars if he/she was found guilty of celebrating Christmas.

  8. The customary Christmas dinner in England included a pig head with mustard sauce. However, this is not followed anymore In England.

  9. It was obligatory to visit the church during Christmas day. The tradition of fasting still continues. No vehicle is allowed to be used in any Christmas service.

  10. According to an old wives’ tale if you bake bread on the Christmas Eve then it will be fresh forever. It’s yet to be known that how many people actually believe in this story and how many of them have ever tried it.

  11. Father Christmas has two addresses, Edinburg and the North Pole. If someone writes a letter and wants to send it to "Toyland" or "Snow land", then that particular letter goes to Edinburg. But, if someone sends the letter to "The North Pole", then it has to go to the North Pole because there is a place called North Pole.

  12. The American Puritans wanted to make the festival of Thanksgiving Day the prime festival instead of Christmas.

  13. The first state to recognize Christmas as an official holiday was Alabama in 1836.

  14. Noel is the word which is used in place of Christmas in France. The word was derived from the French phrase "les bonnes nouvelles" which means "the good news" and it refers to the gospel.

  15. In the Ukraine, if you find a spider web in the house on Christmas morning, it is believed to be a harbinger of good luck! There once lived a woman so poor, says a Ukrainian folk tale, that she could not afford Christmas decorations for her family. One Christmas morning, she awoke to find that spiders had trimmed her children’s tree with their webs. When the morning sun shone on them, the webs turned to silver and gold. An artificial spider and web are often included in the decorations on Ukrainian Christmas trees.

  16. At Christmas, it is traditional to exchange kisses beneath the mistletoe tree. In ancient Scandinavia, mistletoe was associated with peace and friendship. That may account for the custom of "kissing beneath the mistletoe".

  17. 'Klaxon' is a name that does not belong to one of Santa’s reindeer. A klaxon is actually a powerful electric horn. Its name comes from a German word meaning "shriek".

  18. In many households, part of the fun of eating Christmas pudding is finding a trinket that predicts your fortune for the coming year. For instance, finding a coin means you will become wealthy. A ring means you will get married; while a button predicts bachelorhood. The idea of hiding something in the pudding comes from the tradition in the Middle Ages of hiding a bean in a cake that was served on Twelfth Night. Whoever found the bean became "king" for the rest of the night.

  19. Frumenty was a spiced porridge, enjoyed by both rich and poor. It was a forerunner of modern Christmas puddings. It is linked in legend to the Celtic god Dagda, who stirred a porridge made up of all the good things of the earth.

  20. In Greek legend, malicious creatures called Kallikantzaroi sometimes play troublesome pranks at Christmas time. In order to get rid of them, salt or an old shoe is burnt. The pungent burning stench drives off, or at least helps discourage, the Kallikantzaroi. Other techniques include hanging a pig’s jawbone by the door and keeping a large fire so they can’t sneak down the chimney.

  21. The poinsettia is a traditional Christmas flower. In Mexico (its original birthplace), the poinsettia is known as the "Flower of the Holy Night".

  22. Louis Prang, a Bavarian-born lithographer who came to the USA from Germany in the 19th century, popularized the sending of printed Christmas cards. He invented a way of reproducing color oil paintings, the "chromolithograph technique", and created a card with the message "Merry Christmas" as a way of showing it off.

  23. The "Urn of Fate" is part of the Christmas celebrations in many Italian households. The Urn of Fate is brought out on Christmas Eve. It holds a wrapped present for everyone. The mother tries her luck first, then the others in turn. If you get a present with your name on it, you keep it; otherwise, you put it back and try again.

  24. In Sweden, a common Christmas decoration is the Julbukk, a small figurine of a goat. It is usually made of straw. Scandinavian Christmas festivities feature a variety of straw decorations in the form of stars, angels, hearts and other shapes, as well as the Julbukk.
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