25 Tidbits You Never Knew about Christmas

1. The use of mistletoe as a Christmas decoration derives from a Norse myth. Norse god, Balder's only weakness was the mistletoe plant. On learning this Loki, the god of mischief carved arrows from the branches of plants which were used to kill Odin's son.

2. A Charlie Brown Christmas revitalized American demand for real Christmas trees, replacing the aluminum tree

3. Nova Scotia sends Boston a Christmas Tree every year to thank them for their assistance after the Halifax Explosion. For Nova Scotians, it is considered a great honor to have your tree selected, and often times the trees are donated in honor of a survivor or casualty of the explosion.

4. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote yearly letters to his children as if they were from Father Christmas. They started off as simple Happy Christmas letters but grew more complex including a polar bear sidekick, the man on the moon, goblins, snow-elves, pictures, and he even developed an Arktik language.

5. As of 2010, Paul McCartney was making $400,000 to $600,000 a year from "Wonderful Christmastime"

6. Tim Burton did not direct "Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas." Henry Selick, director of "James and the Giant Peach" and "Coraline," carried out the task, due to Burton having prior commitments to "Batman Returns."

7. For the 2018 animated film 'The Grinch' the studio originally wanted British actor Benedict Cumberbatch to voice the Grinch using his natural voice, but Benedict felt that, since the rest of the cast is American, the Grinch should have an American accent.

8. Letters to Santa Claus in Himmelpfort ('heaven's gate') in Germany are answered by the German postal service. In 2020, about 300,000 letters were received from 65 countries and each of them was answered, some of them in Braille. The response letters are postmarked with a special stamp.

9. Scientists reconstructed from the rotting remains of Saint Nicholas an image of what Father Christmas/Santa Claus really looked like when he was alive --short, olive-skinned, with dark brown eyes and a broken nose

10. Puritans hated Christmas celebrations. To them, it had "no biblical justification" & only led to immoral behavior. It was banned in England in the 1650s, leading to pro-Christmas rioting. It was also banned in the Puritan colonies (including Boston), where it only became popular after 1776.

11. When green lasers such as the ones used in Christmas displays get very cold, they stop emitting green and instead emit an invisible infrared beam that can cause eye damage

12. The first ever Christmas movie came out in 1898. Entitled "Santa Claus", it depicted Santa leaving presents on Christmas Eve

13. Over 80,000 trees were planted on Sable Island in an effort to stabilize it. Only one tree survived, and despite being over 50 years old, is only a few feet tall. It is decorated yearly as a Christmas tree in December as part of a tradition among the station staff.

14. Christmas TV movie production has quadrupled over 10 years partly due to streaming algorithms

15. The #1 Christmas singles in the last 3 years on the UK charts were parody songs about sausage rolls

16. Bubble lights on a Christmas tree are filled with the low boiling solvent methylene chloride that boils and creates bubbles with the heat of a Christmas tree light bulb.

17. Advent doesn't start on 1st December. It starts on the 4th Sunday before Christmas so varies by up to a week. The 1st December 'tradition' was invented by companies making advent calendars so the same units/designs can be sold every year.

18. Dr. Seuss was the co-producer of the classic cartoon, "How The Grinch Stole Christmas." Seuss himself wrote the lyrics for the famous song, "You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch."

19. A tree in Glastonbury, England, is said to flower on Christmas day—and people were disappointed that it did not obey the switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.

20. Jimmy Boyd's “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church in Boston when it was released on the grounds that it mixed kissing with Christmas. Boyd was photographed meeting with the Archdiocese to explain the song. After the meeting, the ban was lifted.

21. In 1867, an American businessman attended a reading of A Christmas Carol and was so moved by it, that he closed his factory on Christmas Day and sent every employee a turkey.

22. After the holidays, the Rockefeller Christmas tree is cut into lumber for Habitat for Humanity homes

23. In Milwaukee, it is a Christmas tradition to eat raw ground beef and onions on rye bread

24. Bing Crosby sang White Christmas for 100,000 tearful troops in France during WWII, he said it was the hardest thing he had to do in his career to not break down himself. Many of the troops would die at the Battle of the Bulge shortly after.

25. The notion of a "white Christmas" was popularized by the writings of Charles Dickens, whose stories that depicted a snowy Christmas season were based on his childhood, which happened to be the coldest decade in England in over a century