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VoL. 19: #50 • Fun Facts About Christmas • (12-10-2023) Tidbits of Coachella Valley
Polls show that 93 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas even if they’re not necessarily religious. Whether or not you count yourself among the majority, you’ll find the following odd and obscure facts about the holiday to be an interesting read.
CHRISTMAS FACTS
• Between 25 and 30 million real Christmas trees are sold in the U.S. each year, with Oregon being the top producer. About 92 percent of the Christmas trees cut here are exported to other states. Nearly half of all American households purchase a real tree, and the average price today is about $80. The average price for a quality reusable artificial tree is $120.
• China is the top producer of artificial trees. Some factories that make fake Christmas trees also produce toilet brushes.
• Artificial trees have out-sold natural ones every year since 1991.
• The average American spends over $1,000 on the holiday, including gifts, travel, food, decorations, donations, etc.
• Christmas became a federal holiday in 1870.
• The Dutch patronized St. Nicholas, but they spelled it “Sint Nikolass” which evolved to “Sinterklass” and then became Santa Claus. Kriss Kringle comes from the German word “Christkindl” meaning Christ child.
• Around 40 percent of holiday sales occur the week before Christmas, with the two busiest shopping days of the year consistently being the Saturday and Sunday before Christmas.
• 66 percent of mens ties are sold at Christmas, with the rest sold for Father’s Day.
• Nearly a third of all retail sales in the U.S. happen in the month of December.
• Women spend an average of 20 hours shopping for Christmas presents, while men report spending less than half that much time.
• Nearly two billion candy canes are made each year, with 90 percent sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The week after Thanksgiving is the top week for candy cane sales because they are used as decorations on Christmas trees. Candy canes are the top-selling non-chocolate candy in December.
• Pastry chef Alain Roby created a 51-footlong candy cane in Geneva, Illinois, in 2012, weighing over 900 pounds. It was broken into pieces and given away.
• Joel Poinsett was a diplomat from South Carolina in the early 1800s. While serving in Mexico, he collected specimens of a wild shrub and shipped them back to America, where they were known as poinsettias and later became today's ubiquitous Christmas plant.
• The 1958 song “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” featured Brenda Lee on vocals. She was only 13 years old when she recorded the tune. By then she was already a seasoned performer, having been celebrated as a child prodigy.
The song, written by Johnny Marks, eventually became the biggest hit song of her career. Lee’s streak of nine Top Ten Billboard hits in the 1960s set a record for Female Solo Artist that wasn’t equaled until 1986 with Madonna. Johnny Marks went on to pen other Christmas hits, including “Rudolf The Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Holly Jolly Christmas.”
• Child singer Jimmy Boyd was 13 when he recorded the novelty song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” in 1952, for Columbia Records. It sold 2.5 million copies in the first week alone. Church leaders in Boston tried to ban the song saying that Christmas is supposed to be a holiday of purity, while the song implies infidelity. The controversy was settled when Boyd appeared before church leaders to discuss the content and meaning of the lyrics, and convinced them that the man in the song was actually the boy's own father in a Santa costume.
• The most-disliked Christmas song of all time, according to a 2020 survey, is “Santa Baby” recorded by Eartha Kitt in 1953, in which she extorts Santa to gift her with expensive luxury goods. Eartha also played the part of the original Catwoman in the 1967 season of “Batman.”
• “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” got his start as a handout booklet used as an advertising gimmick written by Johnny Marks when he was employed as a copywriter for the Montgomery Ward department stores in 1939.
• Marks also wrote “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (a gold record for Brenda Lee), “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” (sung by Bing Crosby), and “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” a Burl Ives recording which sold 8,000,000 copies. Johnny Marks himself was Jewish and never celebrated Christmas.
• The now-popular 1946 Jimmy Stewart film “It’s a Wonderful Life” originally bombed at the box office. When the copyright expired in 1974, interest in the film had been so flat that the studio didn't renew it. Television networks were therefore allowed to air it for free, and found it perfectly suitable for showing throughout the holiday season. It quickly became a classic and was ranked the #1 Most Inspirational Film by the American Film Institute. It was Donna Reed’s first starring role.
• The 2018 computer-animated film “The Grinch” is the highest-grossing Christmas movie ever, edging out “Home Alone.” However, controversy exists over whether or not “Home Alone” actually qualifies as a Christmas movie, or if it is simply a movie that takes place at Christmas time.
• Most of Hallmark’s sappy holiday films are created in a single month of filming, with many requiring only two weeks to shoot. The majority are filmed in Canada due to tax breaks, particularly in Vancouver. In 2020 alone, Hallmark cranked out 40 of the formulaic films.
• The world’s tallest Christmas tree was a freshly cut Douglas fir standing 221 feet tall. Consider that the Statue of Liberty is only 151 feet tall from her toes to the tip of her torch. The massive tree was proudly displayed at a Seattle, Washington shopping plaza in 1950.
• Holly is associated with Christmas because the pointed leaves symbolize the thorns in Christ’s crown and the red berries symbolize drops of blood.
• The world’s largest gingerbread house was about the size of a typical 4-bedroom, 2-bath home, measuring just over 2,500 square feet of floor space. Built by Texas A&M students in Bryan, Texas in November 2013, the house was erected on a nearby golf course. Construction materials included 1,800 pounds of butter, 7,200 eggs, 7,200 pounds of flour, nearly 3,000 pounds of brown sugar, and decorated with over 22,000 pieces of bright-colored candy. It was estimated that the house consisted of around 3.5 million calories.
The cost to tour the remarkable facility and meet Santa was $3. Over $150,000 was raised and donated towards the construction of a new trauma center for the local children’s hospital. The house was dismantled after two weeks and the edible parts were donated to local food banks.
• The largest gathering of people wearing Christmas sweaters happened in Lawrence, Kansas, on December 19, 2015, when some 3,473 people showed up to a football game, all clad in gaily decorated holiday sweaters.
The spectators, the marching band, and the team’s staff all wore the festive sweaters as Kansas played against Montana. Santa, his reindeer, and various snowmen also showed up for the game. Kansas won.
