Christmas Trivia

Here are some Christmas Trivia for you -
• “White Christmas” (1954), starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, was the first movie to be made in Vista Vision, a deep-focus process.
• The first president to decorate the white house Christmas tree in the United States was Franklin Pierce.
• Rudolph” was actually created by Montgomery Ward in the late 1930’s for a holiday promotion and as the saying goes “The rest is history”.
• If you received all of the gifts in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” you would receive 364 gifts.
• In 1843, “A Christmas Carol” was written by Charles Dickens in just six weeks.
• Christmas became a national holiday in America on June, 26, 1870.
• In America, the weeks leading up to Christmas are the biggest shopping weeks of the year. Many retailers make up to 70% of their annual revenue in the month preceding Christmas.
• The world’s biggest Christmas tree (76 m high) was put up in America in 1950.
• The world’s highest artificial Christmas tree measured 52 m (170.6 ft) and was covered in green PVC artificial foliage. The ‘Peace Tree’ was designed by Grupo Sonae Distribuição Brasil and displayed in Moinhos de Vento Park, Porto Alegre, Brazil from 1 December 2001 until 6 January 2002
• The Pilgrims did not celebrate Christmas
• Silent Night was written in 1818, by an Austrian priest Joseph Mohr. He was told the day before Christmas that the church organ was broken and would not be prepared in time for Christmas Eve.
• The first American Christmas carol was written in 1649 by a minister named John de Brebeur and is called “Jesus is Born”.
• There are approximately 25-30 million Real Christmas Trees sold in the U.S. every year.
• There are close to 350 million Real Christmas Trees currently growing on Christmas Tree farms in the U.S. alone, all planted by farmers.
• Real Trees are a renewable, recyclable resource.
• It can take as many as 15 years to grow a tree of typical height (6 – 7 feet) or as little as 4 years, but the average growing time is 7 years.
• Before settling on the name of Tiny Tim for his character in “A Christmas Carol,” three other alliterative names were considered by Charles Dickens. They were Little Larry, Puny Pete, and Small Sam.
• George Washington spent Christmas night 1776 crossing the Delaware River in dreadful conditions. Christmas 1777 fared little better – at Valley Forge, Washington and his men had a miserable Christmas dinner of Fowl cooked in a broth of Turnips, cabbage and potatoes.
• Hallmark introduced its first Christmas cards in 1915, five years after the founding of the company.