The "Good" King Wenceslaus was the Duke of Bohemia. He made pease with the German King Henry I in the 10th century. It is said that many centuries later, while fighting in Bohemia, British troops heard the song and brought it back home with them.

The custom of using Xmas goes back to early Christians who often wrote in Greek using the Greek language.
X is the 1st letter in Christ, so X was often used as a holy symbol.

On September 21, 1897, the New York Sun ran its famous editorial that declared, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

On November 22, 1934, "SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN" was first heard on Eddie Cantor's Thanksgiving radio show.

On November 25, 1949, "RUDOLPH, THE RED-NOSED REINDEER" appeared on the music charts for the first time.

The poem "A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS" {"T 'WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS...."} by Clement C. Moore was published anonymously in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel on December 23, 1823.

Our modern day image of Santa Claus is based on a Thomas Nast cartoon. Nast is know for "Uncle Sam" figure, and both the donkey, the symbol of the Democratic Party, and the elephant, the symbol for Republicans

800:Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III.

1066: William the Conqueror was crowned King William I of England

1223: St. francis of Assisi assembled one of the first nativity scenes, in Greccio, Italy.

1642: Sir Isaac Newton, British mathematician and the founder of modern physics, was born.

1651: The General Court of Massachusetts passed a law making the observance of Christmas a penal offense and ordered a fine (five shillings) for "observing any such day as Christmas."

1741: The centigrade temperature scale was devised by Anders Celsius and incorporated into a De lisle thermometer in Uppsala, Sweden.

1758: Halley's Comet was first sighted by Johann Georg Palitzsch.

1776: General George Washington led his troops across the Delaware River to launch a surprise attack on the Hessian quarters at Trenton, N.J.

1818: The song "SILENT NIGHT" was performed for the first time at the St. Nikolaus church in Oberndorff, Austria.

1831: Louisiana and Arkansas became the first states to observe Christmas as a legal holiday.

1862: Two teams of Union Army men played a baseball game at Hilton Head, S.C., before a crowd estimated at 40,000. This game is credited with popularizing the game as soldiers went home after the war and organized teams of their own.

1868: President Andrew Johnson granted an unconditional pardon to all persons involved in the Southern rebellion that resulted in the Civil War.

1899: Humphrey Bogart, star of "CASABLANCA" and "THE MALTESE FALCON", was born.

1914: The legendary but unofficial "Christmas Truce" took place. A group of British and German soldiers in the trenches of the western front stopped firing and met each other in no-man's land.

1918: Anwar Sadat, president of Egypt from October 1970 until his assassination in October 1981, was born.

1926: Emperor Hirohito acceded to the Japanese throne after the death of his father Yoshihito and remained there until his death in 1989.

1938: director George Cukor announced that Vivien Leigh would play Scarlett O'Hara in "GONE WITH THE WIND".

1941: British-controlled Hong Kong surrended to advancing Japanese forces.

1946: Comedian W.C. Fields died in Pasadena, Calif. at age 66.

1950: The Coronation Stone, taken from Scone in Scotland by Edward I in 1296, was stolen from Westminster Abbey in London and smuggled back to Scotland by a group of Scottish Nationalists.

1959: Future Beatles drummer Ringo Starr received his first set of drums as a Christmas present.

1968: At 1:10 am ET, after Apollo 8 circled the moon for 20 hours, the spacecraft's service propulsion system engine was fired to achieve the velocity required to "escape" from the lunar orbit. Shortly afterwards, Jim Lovell told the world "Hello, Houston, there is a Santa Claus, we're coming home."

1977: Sir Charles Chaplin, silent film star, died in Switzerland at age 88.

1985: Mexico City police discovered a major museum theft of pre-Columbian treasures.

1986: Hijackers of an Iraqi Airways Boeing 737...en route from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan...exploded grenades. The fiery crash in Saudi Arabia that resulted killed 67 of the 107 people aboard.

1989: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed by the army after they were tried in secret and found guilty of genocide.

1989: Christmas services were held in Lockerbie, Scotland, where residents mourned the loss of 270 lives in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 with relatives of the victims.

1990: Mikhail Gorbachev was given direct control of the Soviet Cabinet and all government ministries in a major widening of his power.

1991: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev resigned as the eighth and final leader of a Communist superpower that had already gone out of existence. The next day, the Supreme Soviet voted to end the Soviet Union. The hammer-and-sickle flag over the Kremlin came down, and Russia's blue-white-and-red flag was raised in its place.

1994: Full-fledged Christmas celebrations returned to Bethlehem for the first time since the Palestinian uprising began six years earlier.

1994: In London, an unidentified 59-year-old woman who'd been implanted with donated eggs gave birth to twins in a case that sparked controversy.

1995: Singer Dean Martin, 78, died at his Beverly Hills home.

1899: Humphrey Bogart, actor

1945: Gary Sandy, actor, "WKRP IN CINCINNATI"

1946: Jimmy Buffett, singer
1946: Larry Csonka, NFL running back/TV host

1948: Barbara Mandrell, country singer/actress

1949: Dan Pastorini, NFL Quarterback
1949: Sissy Spacek, actress

1950: singer Annie Lennox, singer, the Eurythmics

1954: Robin Campbell, singer/musician, UB40

1958: Rickey Henderson, MLB outfielder

1971: Noel Hogan, musician, The Cranberries

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