20 Facts about Christmas

As a kind of primer for the big day I wanted to share some of the most interesting facts about the Festive Season that I have come across in my fairly extensive reading about Christmas. Some you will know, others you may not. If you are familiar with all 20 then you are as much of a Christmas addict as I am!

Here goes, and if your next pub quiz has a Christmas round you are set for full marks!

1. The date of Christmas Day may have been tied to the Winter Solstice celebrations associated with the pagans. Under the Julian calendar the Solstice took place on December 25 until the Leap Year was instituted. This change required the movement of the Solstice to December 21, separating the two festivals.
2. Saturnalia, a Roman celebration for the god Saturn took place from December 17 to December 23 and involved eating, drinking and gambling. This was followed by Kalends, the secular New Year, a three-day holiday from January 1where people put evergreens up in their houses and exchanged New Year gifts. Parts of each festival survived to become elements of our modern Christmas.
3. The Norse people called this time of the year Jul (which became Yule in English) and marked the ‘dying’ of the old year. Perhaps this festival contains the origin of Santa Claus and his reindeer, following the example of Odin who rode his eight-legged horse Sleipnir across the sky. Children would put out straw and sugar for Sleipnir on the night of Odin’s annual hunt.
4. In the Middle Ages, the churches celebrated in December with a Feast for Fools. The festival, which started on St. Nicholas’ Day included cross dressing, masters becoming servants and vice versa and the election of a Boy Bishop. This topsy turvy festival took elements of the old Kalends festival.
5. Boxing Day, December 26, developed from the tradition of landowners giving each of their tenants a Christmas ‘Box’ on the day after Christmas consisting of either food or money.
6. Parliament banned the celebration of Christmas in 1643, but it only really took hold in 1649 once Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector and started to enforce the law vigorously. Fortunately, Charles II reinstated Christmas celebrations upon his restoration to the throne in 1660.
7. There are records of Christmas Trees being put up by George III at Windsor Castle in the 1790s. However, it was only popularised amongst the wider population in 1848 when Illustrated London News published a picture of Victoria and Albert next to a tabletop Christmas Tree.
8. A Visit from St Nicholas, the 1823 poem by Clement Clarke Moore introduced and named the eight reindeer.
9. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was published in 1843, and was followed by four other Christmas Books, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and The Haunted Man.
10. A Christmas Carol was originally a pamphlet that Dickens was writing called ‘On Behalf of the Poor Man’s Child’. He turned it into a story which he thought would have more effect and used the Ghost of Christmas Present to voice the ideas contained in the pamphlet.
11. Dickens himself set A Christmas Carol in a snowy Christmas because he had seen a number of White Christmases in his childhood and thought it integral to the perfect Christmas Day.
12. The first Christmas Card was sent in 1843 and Christmas Crackers appeared in 1846 thanks to Thomas Smith, a London sweet maker.
13. Christmas Presents were not routinely exchanged until the 1860s. Prior to this, they were exchanged on New Year’s Day.
14. The Christmas pantomime took elements of the Kalends festival, with the Dame, played by a man, and the Principal Boy, played by a woman.
15. The Coca-Cola company wasn’t responsible for putting Father Christmas in a red and white outfit. The colours had become popular in Victorian times with Christmas cards showing him in these colours.
16. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was a poem written by Robert May in 1939, but only became widely popular when Gene Autry set the words to music in 1949. Since then, there have been various versions by many different singers which, between them, have sold over 80 million records.
17. The first official Christmas Number One was Al Martino’s Here in my Heart in 1952. Dickie Valentine had the first Christmas themed Number One with Christmas Alphabet in 1955.
18. The first Christmas chart battle is generally accepted to be that between Slade and Wizzard in 1973. Slade won the battle with Merry Christmas Everybody getting to Number One for six weeks. They were still in the Top 40 in February!
19. In 1984 Band Aid sold over 3 million copies of Do They Know It’s Christmas. It completed a unique treble for Paul McCartney who appeared on the best-selling single of the 1960s, She Loves You by The Beatles, the 1970s, Mull of Kintyre by Wings and the 1980s with Band Aid.
20. In 1985, Shakin’ Stevens reached Number One with Merry Christmas Everyone, a record he’d recorded for release the previous year, but quietly shelved when he saw the competition from Band Aid and Wham!

Hope you enjoyed that rundown of my favourite Christmas Facts!

I have taken my facts from a range of different places, but special mention must be made of Judith Flanders Christmas: A Biography which is a very interesting read and highly recommended.