~ In 1836, Alabama is the first state in the USA to declare Christmas a legal holiday.

~ The biggest selling Christmas single of all time is Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”

~ 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.

~ Epiphany, 6th January, is the traditional end of the Christmas holiday and is the date on which we take down the tree and decorations. To do so earlier is thought to bring bad luck for the rest of the year. From the middle ages until the mid-nineteenth century, Twelfth Night was more popular than Christmas day, and even today some countries celebrate Epiphany as the most important day of the Christmas season.

~ 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.

~ Thirty-four to thirty-six million Christmas trees are produced each year and 95 percent are shipped or sold directly from Christmas tree farms.

~ Oregon is the leading producer of Christmas trees - 8.6 million in 2001.

~ The first Christmas tree retail lot in the United States was started in 1851 in New York by Mark Carr.

~ It took Charles Dickens just six weeks to complete “A Christmas Carol” in 1843.

~ “It’s a Wonderful Life” appears on TV more often than any other holiday movie.

~ “Rudolph” was actually created by Montgomery Ward in the late 1930’s for a holiday promotion.

~ If you received all of the gifts in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, you would receive 364 presents.

~ Christmas became a national holiday in America on June, 26, 1870.

~ Coca Cola was the first beverage company to use Santa for a winter promotion.

~ More diamonds are sold around Christmas than any other time of the year.

~ Electric lights for trees were first used in 1895.