The word Christmas comes from the words Cristes maesse, or "Christ's Mass."
Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus for members of the Christian religion. Most historians peg the first celebration of Christmas to Rome in 336 A.D.
In 325AD, Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, introduced Christmas as an immovable feast on 25 December. He also introduced Sunday as a holy day in a new 7-day week, and introduced movable feasts (Easter).
In 354AD, Bishop Liberius of Rome officially ordered his members to celebrate the birth of Jesus on 25 December.
However, even though Constantine officiated 25 December as the birthday of Christ, Christians, recognizing the date as a pagan festival, did not share the emperor's good meaning. Christmas failed to gain universal recognition among Christians until quite recently. In certain Protestant areas the celebration of Christmas was even banned.
The custom of sending Christmas cards started in Britain in 1840 when the first 'Penny Post' public postal deliveries began. (Helped by the new railway system, the public postal service was the 19th century's communication revolution, just as email is for us today.)
In 1647 Christmas was banned in England, and anyone found making Christmas pies, or putting up Christmas decorations, was in serious trouble, and often arrested as an example to others.
It is bad luck to bring holly or ivy into the house before 24 December.
Animals are not mentioned int the bible stories of Christmas. It all started twelve hundred years after the birth of Christ when a carol described how the donkey carried Mary to Bethlehem and the other animals looked after her and the new baby in the stables.
Trees were decorated with apples, cakes and sweets for many centuries.
St Fransis of Assisi introduced Christmas Carols to formal church services.
The word Carol comes from the ancient Greek choros, which means "dancing in a circle," and from the Old French word carole, meaning "a song to accompany dancing."
Christmas Carols were banned between 1647 and 1660 in England by Oliver Cromwell who thought that Christmas should be a solemn day.
The tradition of carol singers going from door to door came about because they were banned from churches in the Middle Ages.
White Christmas by Irving Berlin is the biggest-selling Christmas song of all time. It is estimated to have sold approximately 350 million copies on record and sheet music.
In 1551, playing sports on Christmas Day was made illegal. This law was later ignored.
One notable medieval English Christmas celebration featured a giant, 165 pound pie. The giant pie was nine feet in diameter. Its ingredients included 2 bushels of flour, 20 pounds of butter, 4 geese, 2 rabbits, 4 wild ducks, 2 woodcocks, 6 snipes, 4 partridges, 2 neats' tongues, 2 curlews, 6 pigeons and 7 blackbirds.
Mince pies became a regular part of Christmas celebrations as early as the 16th century (Tudor times), when mince pies were coffin or cradle shaped, rather than round as they are now. At the time, they contained quite a bit of shredded meat in addition to the usual melange of dried fruits.
The crusaders returned from the Holy Land with spices, and it was deemed appropriate to celebrate Christ's birthday with a pie containing spices from His native land. It was important to add three spices (cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg) for the three gifts given to the Christ child by the Magi.
It was thought lucky to eat one mince pie on each of the twelve days of Christmas (ending with Epiphany, the 6th of January). Alternatively to refuse one would lead to bad luck.
The Christmas boxes were made from clay and were not made in the shape of a box. They were hollow clay balls with a slit in the top.
The use of evergreen trees to celebrate the winter season occurred before the birth of Christ.
The decorated Christmas tree can be traced back to the ancient Romans who during their winter festival decorated trees with small pieces of metal during Saturnalia, a winter festival in honor of Saturnus, the god of agriculture.
An evergreen, the Paradise tree, was decorated with apples as a symbol of the feast of Adam and Eve held on December 24th during the middle ages.
Christmas trees were sold in Alsace in 1531. Alsace was at that time a part of Germany. Today it is part of France. The trees were sold at local markets and set up in homes undecorated.
Kris Kringle is the German words for "Christ's Child"
The first Animal Crackers were not made for eating...they were made as Christmas tree decorations.
Sixteenth century folklore credited Martin Luther as being the first to decorate an indoor tree. After a walk through a forest of evergreens with shining stars overhead, Luther tried to describe the experience to his family and showed them by bringing a tree into their home and decorating it with candles. Some historians state that the first evidence of a lighted tree appeared more than a century after Martin Luther's death in 1546.
The oldest record of a decorated Christmas tree came from a 1605 diary found in Stasburg, France (Germany in 1605). The tree was decorated with paper roses, apples and candies.
In 1834, Queen Vistoria's husband, Prince Albert, was credited with bringing the first Christmas tree to Windsor Castle for the Royal Family. Some historians state that in actuality Queen Charlotte, Victoria's grandmother, recalled that a Christmas Tree was in the Queen's lodge at Windsor on Christmas Day in 1800.
Since 1971, the Province of Nova Scotia has presented the Boston Christmas Tree to the people of Boston in gratitude for the relief supplies received from the citizens of Boston after a ship exploded in 1917 following a collision in the Halifax, Nova Scotia Harbor. Part of the city was leveled killing and injuring thousands.
Christmas trees remove dust and pollen from the air.
The first decorated Christmas was in Riga, Latvia in 1510.
Between 1887-1933 a fishing schooner called the "Christmas Ship" would tie up at the Clark Street bridge and sell spruce trees from Michigan to Chicagoans.
In 1856 Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, was the first President to place a Christmas tree in the White House.
In 2000 31 percent of United States households had a real tree, 49 percent had a fake tree and 21 percent had no tree.
Thomas Edison's assistant, Edward Johnson, came up with the idea of electric lights for Christmas trees in 1882.
Christmas tree lights were first mass produced in 1890.
Teddy Roosevelt banned the Christmas tree from the White House for environmental reasons.
