Christmas Trivia: Drop Knowledge Bombs on Family

As you know, ville Patch has made a hobby of finding fun facts and trivia fodder for most major holidays. Why?

So you can drop some fantastic knowledge bombs on your family while at the feasting table, or while unwrapping presents.

So in that spirit ... we know that there were three Wise Men, 12 days of Christmas and that Santa delivers all his presents around the world in one night. But did you know...

$23,439.38 

How much it would cost to buy your "true love" all the gifts in the 12 Day of Christmas.

12.9 billion hours, $447 billion

How many hours Americans were expected to spend shopping, wrapping and returning gifts last year. That was about 42 hours and $688.87 per person. 

Get your postman/postwoman a gift

According to Hallmark, Christmas is the largest card-sending occasion. Nearly 1.5 billion cards are sent to friends and family every Christmas Season. (That's actually down 400 million cards since 2004.)

$983 million

The value of U.S. imports of Christmas tree ornaments from China between January and September 2011. China was the leading country of origin for such items. Similarly, China was the leading foreign source of artificial Christmas trees shipped to the United States ($79.7 million worth) during the same period.

Best-selling trees 

The best-selling trees are Scotch pine, Douglas fir, Noble fir, Fraser fir, Virginia pine, balsam fir and white pine. The first decorated tree dates back to 1510 in Riga, Latvia.

Tree maturation 

It takes the average Christmas Tree seven to ten years to mature .

White Christmas

According to Venere.com, Bing Crosby 's 'White Christmas', released in 1942, is the best-selling Christmas song of all time. The site also reports that 1 in 10 presents received at Christmas will be broken by 
the New Year!

Insuring Santa 

Lloyd's of London issued the first insurance policy  to protect Santa Claus. The policy covers Santa until the 25th of December in the event of accident and illness, in the run up to and during his worldwide travels to deliver presents to good children.

Your Christmas tree is edible

Well, unless it’s made of plastic. The bark of evergreen trees is not only edible, but is actually a pretty good source of Vitamin C. Just don’t eat the pinecones. And speaking of trees…

Seven out of 10 dogs get Christmas presents from their owners

And they deserve them, too—which is more than I can say about the cats of the world. I guess those other three-out-of-10 dogs shouldn’t have been digging in the back yard. Santa’s watching! Although…

Santa would have to visit roughly 1,300 homes per second to deliver presents just to the United States alone

This just proves what I’ve been trying to convince my brother this whole time: Santa really is magic.

Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” is the best-selling Christmas single of all time

Not surprising that it beat out “Jingle Bells”—that song doesn’t actually mention Christmas once.

If you count all the gifts given in “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” you’d get 364 gifts

Which means a gift for every day of the year—except Christmas, I guess. If you ask me, I’d say just give me the five golden rings and keep the lords a-leaping.

The traditions of trees, mistletoe and elves all stem from pagan roots

In fact, a lot of Christmas traditions actually pre-date Christianity. Same with Easter. Look it up.

Humphrey Bogart and Sir Isaac Newton were both born on Christmas

Which probably made for terrible birthdays. And I doubt their parents doubled-up on the presents. Still, it was probably a better day than for these folks…

Famous clowns W.C. Fields and Charlie Chaplin both died on Christmas 

And it’s no laughing matter, unless you’re thinking about Chaplin doing that funny penguin strut. Then it’s hilarious.

Holly wreaths are universal symbols

Ancient druid and pagan cultures believed holly had magical properties because it stayed green all year long, and would often wear sprigs and berries. Later, when Christianity took hold, holly wreaths became a popular holiday ornament. It is said that the sharp leaves and the round shape represent the crown of thorns, and the red berries represent the blood of Christ. Either way, holly wreaths have been a holiday tradition longer than there’s been a Christmas.