Knowing Christmas

Knowing Christmas

By Ronnie Neiman

Christmas is considered an annual sacred Christian holiday that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, the spiritual leader and founder of Christianity. While many people celebrate Christmas to honour Jesus’s birth, it’s also celebrated as a cultural holiday across the globe. It may have started with religious significance; it is also a time of the year that signifies gift giving. 

The early Christmas celebrations combined a mix of pagan and Christian traditions, resulting in activities that might seem more appropriate for Halloween these days: bonfires, trading treats for tricks and Mardi Gras–like bacchanals in the streets. It became so known for debauchery that the Pilgrims strongly discouraged celebrating it and even outlawed it in some cities when they first came to America.

Christmas wasn’t forgotten, but it didn’t start to regain popularity until the mid-1800s. Two very popular Christmas books at the time—Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Washington Irving’s The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. —portrayed Christmas in a warm, family-friendly way. Their recounting was mostly fictitious, but they kindled the imagination of Victorians. On June 26, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant declared Christmas to be a U.S. national holiday. Canada followed closely in celebrating Christmas. 

Gift-giving and celebrating the birth of Jesus is not the only traditions that is celebrated with Christmas.

Other traditions include:

  • Watching Christmas Movies

  • Singing Carols

  • Decorating Trees 

  • Eating Christmas (like turkey, ham, cranberry sauce, and candy canes)

Some fun Christmas Facts

  • No one likes dropped pine needles. According to a survey done by Statista, 71% of respondents said they planned on putting up a Christmas tree in 2021; however, only 24% of those respondents said they were putting up a real tree. The other 47% said they were opting for fake trees.

  • People like to get ahead with their Christmas shopping. According to the National Retail Federation, 61% of consumers start Christmas shopping by early November. If you’re a shopping procrastinator, don’t worry—these stores are open on Christmas Day.

  • Count ’em up: Your true love gives you 364 gifts total, according to “The 12 Days of Christmas” song—that’s one every day of the year … except Christmas.

  • We love our minty treats: Nearly 2 billion candy canes are sold every year in the four weeks before Christmas, and the longest candy cane ever created was 51 feet long.

  • Christmas carols know no bounds: “Jingle Bells” was the first song ever played from outer space when it was broadcast during NASA’s Gemini 6A space flight in December 1965.

  • Shop in your jammies: More than 60% of U.S. shoppers prefer to skip the stores and buy their holiday gifts online.