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Courtesy of http://www.twinklebulbs.com/trivia.htm

Did you know . . .

• The idea for using electric Christmas lights came from an American named Ralph E. Morris in 1895. The new lights proved safer than the traditional candles, which often started fires by falling in the dry Christmas trees.
• 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. The poinsettia, a traditional Christmas flower, originally grew in Mexico, where it is also known as the ‘Flower of the Holy Night’. Joel Poinsett first brought it to America in 1829.
• The first printed reference to Christmas trees appeared in Germany in 1531. Real Christmas trees are an all-American product, grown in all 50 states, including Alaska and Hawaii. California, Oregon, Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina are the top Christmas tree producing states. Oregon is the leading producer of Christmas trees - 8.6 million in 1998. Christmas trees are edible. Many parts of pines, spruces, and firs can be eaten. The needles are a good source of vitamin C. Pine nuts, or pine cones, are also a good source of nutrition. The best selling Christmas trees are Scotch pine, Douglas fir, Noble fir, Fraser fir, Virginia pine, Balsam fir and white pine. 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.
• Artificial Christmas trees have outsold real ones since 1991.
• Candy canes began as straight white sticks of sugar candy used to decorated the Christmas trees. A choirmaster at Cologne Cathedral decided have the ends bent to depict a shepherd’s crook and he would pass them out to the children to keep them quiet during the services. It wasn’t until about the 20th century that candy canes acquired their red stripes. During the Christmas/Hanukkah season, more than 1.76 billion candy canes are made. Candy canes have been around for centuries, but it wasn’t until around 1900 that they were decorated with red stripes and bent into the shape of a cane. They were sometimes handed out during church services to keep the children quiet. One story (almost certainly false) that is often told about the origin of the candy cane is as follows:
• In the late 1800’s a candy maker in Indiana wanted to express the meaning of Christmas through a symbol made of candy. He came up with the idea of bending one of his white candy sticks into the shape of a Candy Cane. He incorporated several symbols of Christ’s love and sacrifice through the Candy Cane. First, he used a plain white peppermint stick. The color white symbolizes the purity and sinless nature of Jesus. Next, he added three small stripes to symbolize the pain inflicted upon Jesus before His death on the cross. There are three of them to represent the Holy Trinity. He added a bold stripe to represent the blood Jesus shed for mankind. When looked at with the crook on top, it looks like a shepherd’s staff because Jesus is the shepherd of man. If you turn it upside down, it becomes the letter J symbolizing the first letter in Jesus’ name. The candy maker made these candy canes for Christmas, so everyone would remember what Christmas is all about.
• In 1836, Alabama was the first state in the USA to declare Christmas a legal holiday.
• In 1856, President Franklin Pierce decorates the first White House Christmas tree.
• In 1907, Oklahoma became the last USA state to declare Christmas a legal holiday.
• Snow globes are collected by many and are available with thousands of different scenes.
• 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.
• The biggest selling Christmas single of all time is Bing Crosby’s White Christmas.
• According to a 1995 survey, 7 out of 10 British dogs get Christmas gifts from their doting owners.
• After “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens wrote several other Christmas stories, one each year, but none was as successful as the original. The four ghosts in Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” were the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Yet to Come, and the ghost of Jacob Marley (former partner of Scrooge).
• American billionaire Ross Perot tried to airlift 28 tons of medicine and Christmas gifts to American POW’s in North Vietnam in 1969.
• The first Christmas card was created in England on December 9, 1842. Hallmark introduced its first Christmas cards in 1915, five years after the founding of the company. An average household in America will mail out 28 Christmas cards each year and see 28 eight cards return in their place. More than three billion Christmas cards are sent annually in the United States.
• 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.