Christmas. You gotta love it. The stress, the panic, the holly-jolly of it all. For most it is the busiest and most expensive time of year. And the parties. So many parties, people and places to see. This is mind, conversations can become thinner than the last carving of Christmas dinner ham. Here’s 10 offbeat Christmas facts to help you when that awkward silence goes on just a bit long than what you’re comfortable with.
- Jesus Christ! The date December 25 is nowhere to be found in the Bible. Furthermore, the consensus among historians seems to be that Jesus was born in springtime and his birth didn’t become a holiday until sometime in the third century.
- The tradition of sticking giant trees in the living room corner and hailing it as some form of God didn’t come into play until the 19th Century. Although Evergreen trees were recognised as signs of winter going back all the way to Ancient Egypt, the spruce, pine and fir wasn’t really admired and decorated as it is today until Prince Albert of Germany gave it as a gift to his wife Queen Victoria of England.
- We all know that Santa Claus came from St. Nicholas, but the style and aesthetic wasn’t down until Madison Avenue got their hands on it. However, the real meaning and idea behind Father Christmas was in the spirit of St. Nic. The fourth-century Christian bishop gave away his riches to help the impoverished and rescued women from servitude.
- Holidays are coming, holidays are coming. It’s Santa! No, it’s Coca-Cola. More specifically it was illustrator Haddon Sundblom, who created the universal image of Santa Claus that we all know and love today. Before 1931 Santa’s appearance was more Freddy Krueger than John Candy.
- Why stockings on the wall? Good Old Saint Nick strikes again. According to legend, gifts in socks was more a charity case than a selection box, as the man himself would drop some coins into the giant socks of poor people.
- Houston we have a jingle. It’s 1965, nine days before Christmas. Astronauts Walter M. Schirra Jr and Thomas P. Stafford decide to have a little fun. Pranking Mission Control claiming to have seen a UFO entering the earth’s atmosphere report to Mission Control that they saw an “unidentified flying object” about to enter Earth’s atmosphere. To break the tension of what NASA could only see as impending doom and destruction of life on earth, the sound of “Jingle Bells” with Schirra playing a small harmonica and backed up by Stafford with a handful of small sleigh bells interrupted the deadly report. Ha-Ha.
- Singing a carol could have gotten you 3 to 5 in the county pen back in the day. That’s right, for sometime Christmas was illegal. Between 1659 and 1681
celebrating Christmas was outlawed in Boston. December 25th didn’t even become a federal holiday in the United States until the 1800s.
- Hey kids, think “Xmas” is punk? Or a new way to abbreviate Christmas, or a secular attempt to take the Christ out of Christmas? Think again. According to From Adam’s Apple to Xmas: An Essential Vocabulary Guide for the Politically Correct, the word “Christianity” was spelled “Xianity” as far back as 1100. X, or Chi, in Greek is the first letter of “Christ” and served as a symbolic stand-in. In 1551, the holiday was called “Xtemmas” but eventually shortened to “Xmas.” So really, Xmas is just as Christian as the longer version.
- Mistletoe might get you more than a peck on the cheek. The festive flower was known to be an ancient symbol of fertility and virility. Furthermore, the Druids believed it was an actual aphrodisiac. The name itself even has a funny meaning : Mistle thrush birds eat the plant’s berries, digest the seeds, and then the droppings eventually grow into new plants. So, the Germanic word for mistletoe literally means “dung on a twig.” So pucker up.
- You may know Washington Irving best for The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and his headless horseman. However, the author wrote a lot about the Big Guy too. In fact, he was the first to envision Santa Claus with his sleigh and reindeer.
