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Christmas facts

Christmas facts to share

Christmas facts card with ornaments, candles and festive details

Tap the button for a random Christmas fact, or scroll on for the full list. Great for quiz night, a card message or a small piece of festive small talk.

Random fact

“The word Christmas comes from the Old English Cristes maesse, meaning Christ's mass, first recorded around 1038.”

Want more festive lore? Try the Christmas Traditions Explorer, read about Christmas around the world, or open a country guide like Christmas in Germany or Christmas in Japan.

All Christmas facts, grouped

Six categories, sixty facts. Skim a section, copy what you like, send the rest to the group chat.

History of Christmas

The Christmas most of us know is younger than it feels. Many of the rituals taken for granted today were invented or popularised in the last 200 years, on top of much older winter festivals.

  1. The word Christmas comes from the Old English Cristes maesse, meaning Christ's mass, first recorded around 1038.
  2. Christmas was banned in England between 1647 and 1660 under Oliver Cromwell. Carolling, decorating and feasting were briefly illegal.
  3. The first commercial Christmas card was sold in London in 1843, the same year Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol.
  4. Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas, a fourth century bishop from what is now Turkey, known for giving secret gifts.
  5. King George V gave the first royal Christmas broadcast on radio in 1932, written by author Rudyard Kipling.
  6. Queen Elizabeth II gave the first televised royal Christmas message in 1957.
  7. Boxing Day takes its name from the boxes of gifts and money given to servants and tradespeople the day after Christmas.
  8. The Christmas truce of 1914 saw British and German soldiers leave their trenches to share food and even play football.
  9. The poinsettia plant is native to Mexico and was brought to the United States by diplomat Joel Roberts Poinsett in 1828.
  10. The first artificial Christmas trees were made in Germany in the 19th century using dyed goose feathers.

Christmas trees and decorations

The decorated indoor tree began as a German custom and became global thanks to one royal family portrait. Most of what is on the tree today follows the same path.

  1. The tradition of decorating evergreen trees indoors began in Germany in the 16th century.
  2. The custom went global after an 1848 engraving showed Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at a decorated tree in Windsor.
  3. The world's tallest cut Christmas tree was a 67 metre Douglas fir, displayed in Seattle in 1950.
  4. Around 30 to 35 million real Christmas trees are sold in the United States each year.
  5. Approximately one in three Christmas trees in Europe comes from Denmark.
  6. Christmas trees grow for around 15 years before they are ready to be sold.
  7. Electric Christmas tree lights first appeared in 1882, demonstrated by Edward Johnson, a colleague of Thomas Edison.
  8. The popular Christmas colours red and green come from medieval church traditions and Victorian printing.
  9. Mistletoe is a parasitic plant. Despite that, it has been a symbol of love and friendship for centuries.
  10. Hanging stockings began with a legend about Saint Nicholas dropping gold coins down a chimney, where they landed in stockings drying by the fire.

Christmas food and drink

Christmas food is a calendar in itself. Many of the most famous dishes were invented to make a winter feast feel rich on whatever was available locally at the time.

  1. Eggnog originated in medieval Britain as a warm, spiced ale drink called posset.
  2. Christmas pudding was once called plum pudding, even though it usually has no plums in it.
  3. More than 350 million boxes of chocolates are sold in the United Kingdom each December.
  4. The world's largest gingerbread house was built in Texas in 2013 and covered more than 2,500 square feet.
  5. Stollen, the German Christmas bread, is dusted with heavy icing sugar to symbolise the swaddled Christ child.
  6. Italian panettone has been baked in Milan since at least the 15th century.
  7. Roast turkey only became the standard British Christmas dinner in the 20th century. Before that goose was more common.
  8. In Japan, ordering fried chicken on Christmas Day became a national tradition after a 1974 KFC marketing campaign.
  9. Candy canes were first recorded in Germany in the 17th century, originally as plain white sticks.
  10. Mulled wine recipes survive from Roman times, when wine was spiced and warmed to make winter drinking safer.

Folklore and traditions

Strip away the lights and shopping and what is left is a rich layer of folklore: witches, lads, cats, bells and brooms. These are the strangest, most local parts of Christmas.

  1. In Norway, families traditionally hide their brooms on Christmas Eve so witches cannot steal them.
  2. In Iceland, children leave shoes on the windowsill for the thirteen Yule Lads, who leave small gifts or rotten potatoes.
  3. Icelandic folklore also includes the Yule Cat, said to eat anyone who does not receive new clothes for Christmas.
  4. In Catalonia, the Caga Tió is a smiling log children feed during Advent and tap with a stick on Christmas Eve.
  5. In Austria and Bavaria, Krampus parades on December 5 feature a horned companion to Saint Nicholas who scares the misbehaving children.
  6. In the Philippines, paról star lanterns light up homes and streets through the longest Christmas season in the world.
  7. Wassailing, an old English tradition of singing to apple trees, is the ancestor of modern carol singing.
  8. In Sweden, the Yule Goat (Julbocken) once delivered gifts, long before Santa took over the job.
  9. The Italian gift bringer La Befana is a kind witch who fills children's stockings on the eve of January 6.
  10. In Venezuela, families in Caracas roller skate to early morning Christmas mass in the days before December 25.

Christmas in pop culture

Most of the modern Christmas brand was built by 20th century songwriters, illustrators, advertising departments and film studios. A surprising number of the classics started as small commissions.

  1. Jingle Bells was originally written in 1857 for the American holiday of Thanksgiving, not Christmas.
  2. The song Silent Night was first performed in a small church in Austria in 1818, accompanied by a guitar because the organ was broken.
  3. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 as part of a Montgomery Ward department store promotion.
  4. Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You was released in 1994 and now generates more than half a million dollars per year in royalties.
  5. The film It's a Wonderful Life flopped at the box office in 1946 and only became a holiday classic through 1970s television reruns.
  6. Home Alone (1990) was filmed in a real house in Winnetka, Illinois that still receives tourists every December.
  7. The song White Christmas, written by Irving Berlin in 1942, is still the best selling single of all time by some measures.
  8. Coca-Cola's red-suited Santa adverts began in 1931 and helped fix the modern look of Father Christmas, though they did not invent it.
  9. Reindeer noses really do glow pink in the cold, thanks to dense networks of blood vessels in the muzzle.
  10. A 2010 study found that A Christmas Carol has been adapted to screen more than 100 times.

Christmas by the numbers

Christmas is the largest annual consumer event in most of the world. The numbers behind it are quietly impressive.

  1. An estimated 1.6 billion Christmas cards are sent in the United States each year.
  2. Roughly 2 billion people around the world celebrate Christmas in some form.
  3. The largest Christmas stocking on record measured over 51 metres long, made in Italy in 2011.
  4. More than 8 million real Christmas trees are sold in the United Kingdom each season.
  5. Online retailers ship more parcels in the first two weeks of December than in any other month of the year.
  6. The average UK household spends around £700 on Christmas, including gifts, food and travel.
  7. More than 300,000 letters are sent to Santa's official address in Rovaniemi, Finland every year.
  8. The Rockefeller Center tree in New York is decorated with around 50,000 lights and 5 miles of wiring.
  9. Spotify reports that festive music streams more than double in the last week of November and stay high until December 26.
  10. The Norwegian spruce gifted to London each year since 1947 is usually between 50 and 100 years old.

How to use these facts

The fastest way to use a Christmas fact is to slip it into a card, a quiz round or a dinner table conversation. The history facts work in school presentations. The folklore facts make strong conversation starters at adult parties. The pop culture facts settle arguments about songs and films. Pick three favourites and you have a small Christmas party trick that lasts the whole season.

For more festive lore, the Christmas trivia page turns these facts into questions, and the Christmas Traditions Explorer lets you compare customs country by country.

Frequently asked questions

Where do these Christmas facts come from?
They are gathered from historical sources, folklore collections, news reports and reference works. The most quoted ones (Coca-Cola Santa, Rudolph, KFC in Japan) are cross checked against more than one source.
Can I use these on a quiz night?
Yes. Use them at home, in a classroom or at a pub quiz. The Christmas around the world section makes a strong fifth round.
What is the most surprising Christmas fact?
For most people it is one of three: that Jingle Bells was written for Thanksgiving, that Christmas was banned in England under Cromwell, or that the modern Coca-Cola Santa is from a 1931 advertising campaign and not 19th century folklore.
Will more facts be added?
Yes. We add new Christmas facts every season. Bookmark the page and check back in December.