ResearchChristmas Trivia
Amuse the kids, amaze your friends, and bore your in-laws with these nuggets of Yuletide minutiae:
President Calvin Coolidge started the tradition of the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923.
We abbreviate Christmas as "Xmas" not because we're crossing out Christ to make the religious Holiday more secular, but because the Roman letter "X" resembles the Greek "X" - 'chi' - which is an abbreviation for Christ.
Santa Claus himself was claimed as a trademarked character by one UK company "Father Christmas, Ltd.", and even proclaimed as such by the company's website www.santa-claus.com. However, the US Patent and Trademark office denied the claim, stating that if a person is trademarked, you either have to supply proof of that person's consent or proof that they're dead - rather difficult to do with a mythological character!
It is an urban legend that the Coca-Cola Corporation originated the Santa Claus figure we know today. Santa was already prancing around in all his red-suited, white-bearded glory in the cartoons of Thomas Nast which started appearing in the magazine "Harper's Weekly" in 1863, 68 years before Haddon H. Sundblom began rendering Santa for Coca-Cola ads in 1931.
The tradition of giving gifts is often attributed both to the gifts of the Magi to the baby Christ and the original gifts of Saint Nicholas. Not many acknowledge that Christmas was also scheduled to replace the Roman Pagan festival of Saturnia, on which gifts were originally exchanged as well.
Speaking of the Magi, they were originally of the tribe from ancient Media, before the Medes became a part of the Persian empire. The Magi were originally supposed to be either sorcerers or wizards, and is in fact the root of our words "magic" and "magician".
Mistletoe gets mixed into Christmas from the Norse mythology associating the plant with good luck and friendship, which in turn comes from Druidic beliefs in mistletoe's magical powers. The idea that we should kiss under it, however, comes from the Celts' associating the plant with fertility.
It seems the evergreen tree was fated to become the official tree of Christmas from the get-go. Among it's many sources include the Pagan Yule log, the Norse symbolic tree Yggdrasil, the Bodhi tree under which Buddha meditated to attain enlightenment, the Christian tree of life from the garden of Eden, and countless other sources. Besides, what else are we going to use in the middle of Winter? Everything else turns brown and drops it's leaves!
And I'll bet all these years you've been celebrating Christmas, but you've never observed Candlemas! Candlemas is the original name of the "Purification of the Virgin", whereby the Virgin Mary attained the state of being pure again according to Jewish law for post-natal practices as given in the Gospel of Luke 2:22-39. Jewish law states that a woman is unclean after giving birth to a male child for forty days. Candlemas was held for years as a traditional date by which the rest of the year may be forecast, particularly by the behavior of animals. Now count forward 40 days from Christmas... and that's how we get Groundhog day!