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~Little Known
Facts About Christmas~
Real Christmas
trees are an all-American product, grown in all 50 states, including
Alaska and Hawaii.
Most
artificial trees are manufactured in Korea, Taiwan, or Hong Kong.
For every real
Christmas tree harvested, 2 to 3 seedlings are planted in its place.
Each hectare provides the daily oxygen requirements of 45 people.
Winter was a
time of celebration to pre-Christian Romans and they decorated fir
trees in honor of this seasonal change.
The use of a
Christmas wreath as a decoration on your front door, mantel or bay
window symbolizes a sign of welcome and long life to all who enter.
Today
poinsettias are the most popular Christmas plant and are the number
one flowering potted plant in the United States.
In 1836,
Alabama is the first state in the USA to declare Christmas a legal holiday.
The biggest
selling Christmas single of all time is Bing Crosby's White Christmas.
Due to the
time zones, Santa has 31 hours to deliver gifts? This means that he
would have to visit 832 homes each second!
In 1937, the
first postage stamp to commemorate Christmas was issued in Austria.
Epiphany, 6th
January, is the traditional end of the Christmas holiday and is the
date on which we take down the tree and decorations. To do so earlier
is thought to bring bad luck for the rest of the year. From the
middle ages until the mid-nineteenth century, Twelfth Night was more
popular than Christmas day, and even today some countries celebrate
Epiphany as the most important day of the Christmas season.
Three years
after Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb in 1879, Edward
H. Johnson, who worked for Edison's company, had Christmas tree bulbs
especially made for him. He proudly displayed his electric tree
lights at his home on Fifth Avenue, New York City. They caused a
sensation although some years were to pass before mass-manufactured
Christmas tree lights were widely available.
In America in
1822, the postmaster of Washington, DC, complained that he had to add
16 mailmen at Christmas to deal with cards alone. He wanted the
number of cards a person could send limited by law. "I don't
know what we'll do if this keeps on," he wrote. |
