The useless bits of info to see if we can make a million posts thread

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In 1974, the Australian city of Darwin is devastated late on Christmas Eve and in the early hours of the morning by Cyclone Tracy.

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In 1834, Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert brought the first Christmas tree to Windsor Castle for the Royal family.

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6 December is St Nicholas's Day - the first of the gift giving days, especially in Holland and Belgium.

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Some priests in Australia advise you to say "Happy Christmas", not "Merry Christmas", because Merry has connotations of getting drunk - which brings its own problems. One should say "Happy" instead.

[cAstAgeAr]

The actual gift givers are different in various countries:

Spain and South America: The Three Kings
Italy: La Befana (a kindly old witch)
England: Father Christmas
France: Pere Noel (Father Christmas)
Russia: In some parts - Babouschka (a grandmotherly figure)
Other parts it is Grandfather Frost.
Germany: Christkind (angelic messenger from Jesus)
She is a beautiful fair haired girl with a shining crown of candles.
Scandinavia: a variety of Christmas gnomes. One is called Julenisse
Holland: St Nicholas.

[cAstAgeAr]

Every year since 1947 the people in Oslo have given a Christmas tree to the city of Westminster. The gift is an expression of goodwill and gratitude for Britain's help to Norway in the 1939-1945 war.

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The first American Christmas carol was written in 1649 by a minister named John de Brebeur and is called "Jesus is Born".

[cAstAgeAr]

Mexicans call the poinsettia "Flower of the Holy Night" - the Holy Night is the Mexican way of saying "Christmas Eve".

[cAstAgeAr]

Tom Smith who owned a sweet shop in London was the originator of the cracker. In the 1840s Tom found that people like sugar almonds, but while he was in France he discovered a variety of sweets wrapped up in a twist of paper. These bonbons were popular, so Tom decided to copy them. When Tom noticed that young men were buying them to give to their sweethearts he began to place "love mottoes" on small slips of paper inside the sweet wrapping.
In 1846 Tom's thoughts turned towards Christmas - instead of sweets he thought he would place toys and novelties inside the twisted wrapping. He experimented with this and the idea of producing a wrapping that could be pulled apart - just like the cracker as we know it today.

[cAstAgeAr]

The word carol is derived from the old French word caroller which derives from the Latin choraula. This itself was derived from the Greek choraules.

[cAstAgeAr]

Births on 25 December:

W C Field (1946)
Alice Cooper (1945)
Princess Alexandra (1936)
Paul Borget (1935)
Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889)

[cAstAgeAr]

Deaths on 25 December:

Conrad Hilton (1979)
Humphrey Bogart (1957)
Dorothy Wordsworth (1855)
Sir Isaac Newton (1727)

[cAstAgeAr]

The biggest selling Christmas single of all time is Bing Crosby's White Christmas.

[cAstAgeAr]

In Switzerland during the Reformation, al instrumental and choral music was banned from churches. In Germany, disapproval of carols resulted in some being converted into hymns.

[cAstAgeAr]

Tinsel on the Christmas Tree is attributed to a woman whose husband died. She was left to bring up a large family of children herself. She was left to do everything working so hard and she was determined to make a happy time for them at Christmas. She prepared a Christmas Tree to surprise them on Christmas Day. Unfortunately spiders visited the tree, and crawled from branch to branch, making webs all over it. The Christ Child saw the tree and knew she would be devastated to find this on Christmas morning. He changed the spiders' webs to shining silver.