Xmas trivia - let's have some fun!

The Xmas tree industry employs more than 100,000 people in the US each year.

in dirt. That is the extent of my knowledge on that subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus#Chimney_tradition

The tradition of Santa Claus entering dwellings through the chimney is shared by many European seasonal gift-givers. In pre-Christian Norse tradition, Odin would often enter through chimneys and fireholes on the solstice.

it's a tradition for people to roller skate to church for christmas mass. Some roads are closed to cars, to allow people safe roller skating. That sounds like fun but I'd break my leg if I tried it, lol.

In order to persuade them to forgeo eating their children and pets. Since the bowls are always empty, they assume their gift has been recieved and they are sated for another year.

I had a Swedish uncle who used to get together with friends to ice skate across the frozen waters separating islands against the wind during the Christmas season. After spending the day in the big town, they would hold canvas between them to act as a sail to help them get home. He was a believer in trolls but also believed the streets of America were paved with gold until he reached NYC and didn't see any. Different generation...

My sister and I used to make up stories about the small figurines my German stepmother spaced on the limbs of the Douglas fir tree as if they were walking in the forest. We spent hours with all the lights in the living room off, with only the large colored lights of the tree making the room glow. We sang Christmas carols at home and greeted those who walked house to house to sing carols, which some people still do.

I hope that fits the trivia topic.

Came here and became a union organizer.

freshwest

It goes back to a time where farmers believed in trolls, and goblins and so one - the goblins lived at the barn - (in a secret place of course) and kind of kept an eye on the farm animals - and made the barn safe and not burning down. And as the bowls with rise pudding - or something else who the goblins like(d) Have myself being doing that some years - and the pigs, horses and chickens was all safe and secure for a whole year Specially as the original Goblin was a rather nasty group of "living under the ground" chaps, who was both angry and often would act out if they was not treated well.. Many of our fairy tales is centering around goblins and trolls, that we had to placate to be able to live in peace with them... Today it is maybe not anyone who really belive in it - but it is for many a tradition to put out a bowl of rice puding - to give to the trolls, or goblins and so one who is out there...

Many scandinavians believed, more or less that the streets of America was pawed with gold - and got rather disappointed when they got to know it for real - and discovered it was not exactly pawed with gold

Diclotican

They had a traditional Christmas show where the youngest daughter hid in the barn on Christmas Eve to hear the animals talk, a Norwegian Christmas legend, I believe. I don't remember how it all turned out. but as my Mom's family was Norwegian. we always loved the story.

maddiemom

It is a tradition, that on christmas eve - the animals can talk, and if you are lucky, you can sit and listen to them - and maybe know a few things about how they are and how they want to be treated... It is a christmas legend from Norway - even though I believe it is a legend from the whole of scandinavia. I think I know how the legend you are talking about in fact - it ended in the animals been treated better than they was - as the children told its parents what the animals had been talking about - and therefore got a idea how to treat the animals better...

We do have a few traditions here in Norway, specially around christmas it is many traditions goes back hundreds of years - many of them going to norse times - maybe ancient times - but as the years have passed, it have been inter-webbed with christianity - and today a part of christmas -even if they traditionally is older than christianity in Norway... When Christianity come to Norway, it was more easy to let old traditions get a christian tradition than to fight old traditions outright... As the old norse had many traditions around christmas time - it was called Jul, aka, they was celebrating that the sun was starting to go the other way, to lighter days and so one - it was more easy for the missionaries to be pragmatic - than to be dogmatic... Even though Olav II Haraldsson (the holly one) was more dogmatic than pragmatic when it come to christianity.. But it was also a way of ensure his own power base here in Norway.. (He died in 1030 at the battle of Stikklestad)

Diclotican

I appreciate the information. The old folks in my Mom's family are long gone. and the relatives still in Norway lost track of for some years.

Although many believe the Friday after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year, it is not. It is the fifth to tenth busiest day. The Friday and Saturday before Christmas are the two busiest shopping days of the year.

America's official national Christmas tree is located in King's Canyon National Park in California. The tree, a giant sequoia called the "General Grant Tree," is over 300 feet (90 meters) high. It was made the official Christmas tree in 1925.

Before settling on the name of Tiny Tim for his character in "A Christmas Carol," three other alliterative names were considered by Charles Dickens. They were Little Larry, Puny Pete, and Small Sam.

big bulb Xmas lights that got too hot to run for very long, and if one burned out, you had to test them one by one with a fresh bulb to see which one it was, before the string would light up again?

It used to drive my dad nuts trying to figure out which one was the burnt out one.

it wasn't my Dad figuring it out it was my husband, lol.

Damned bulbs.

that did NOT take the whole string of lines out if one burned out. I still have those like of lights, and if I decorated for Christmas, they would be the only ones I would use. It took years of one-light-goes-the-whole-string-goes before I seriously looked for the old kind again.

I still have some.

as part of an advertising campaign for Coca-Cola.

about 70 years...

in "A Visit from St. Nicholas" ('Twas the Night before Christmas") written in 1822:

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes--how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.

That visual image predates the Coca-Cola ad campaign image, which was my only point.

I was just adding my bit of Christmas trivia to your bit of Christmas trivia

I believe the key is the "American" version of Santa Clause.

to America's Santa Claus. They are all descendants of Holland's "Sinter Klaas":



And related to France's "Pere Noel":

was a Greek born in what is modern day Turkey.

He is the patron saint of:
Children, coopers, sailors, fishermen, merchants, broadcasters, the falsely accused, repentant thieves, pharmacists, archers, pawnbrokers

Hilarious essay by David Sedaris on Xmas in Netherlands

Grew up in a family of 7 kids (60's &early 70's). At some point during Thanksgiving dinner, we would draw names from a bowl to determine which sibling we would buy a gift for. It was to be kept a secret until Christmas Eve.

Bought the tree Thanksgiving weekend and would be decorated it two weeks before Christmas. Opening the boxes of ornaments was always something special. Each one always seemed to have a story. The best were the ones from our parents first Christmas as a marred couple.

On Christmas Eve, we would open that gift from each other, have egg nog and other treats listening to Christmas Carols on my father's home made Hi Fi ( he was an electrical engineer for GE). Santa always made an early visit at some point and gave us new PJs to wear the next day.

Also, part of the Christmas Eve tradition was to place our stars. With seven kids, there was never room under the tree for everything. We had home made cardboard stars covered in foil with our names written on them. Just before going to bed (all seven sleeping in my sisters bed) we would place the star somewhere in the living room and the the next morning, it would be magically sitting on top of our pile of presents. (Our Uncle worked for the local toy company)!

On Christmas morning, we were allowed to get up at 6 am and open our stockings (handmade by my father's mother). We were NOT allowed to touch our pile of gifts from Santa until 7 am when Mom and Dad would get up. We each had to eat the orange and apple stuffed in the toe of the stocking before touching the candy canes or that sweet book of lifesavers!

We too, had the BIG lights for outside as well as the smaller big bulbs for the tree inside.

Advent wreath with 5 candles, one to be lit each sunday leading up to Christmas. And advent calender ( always a source for a fight as to who's turn it was to open the little window). Mom always had a Yule Log (birch log with a bayberry candle stuck in it with evergreens and holly). The candle was the 'burning" of the Yule log as our fireplace was made of cardboard and was only brought out at Christmas time to give Santa an entrance place!

We use to have snow every year... now not so much

Oh...and according to my grandmother, the bergermeister meisterberger's evil sister, it was in bad taste to use X-mas

Thank you for sharing them. I believe I've just gotten in the Christmas spirit!!!

Your Welcome!

Christkindl translated Christ child.
in some areas Christkindl was the gift bringer.
Stumbled on that a couple years ago.

on a U.S. Air Force base when my dad was transferred to Germany. The American teacher decided to expose us to German Christmas traditions. She invited a skinny-looking German Saint Nick into the classroom and following behind him was a guy they called Schwartz Peter (Black Peter) whose face looked like it was covered in black coal dust. Santa Klaus asked if the kids had behaved themselves. The teacher decided to play a gag on the class with a boy named Detlaf whose mother was German. She told Black Peter that Detlaf had been a bad boy. Black Peter carried a dirty coal sack over his shoulder and put Detlaf in it and carried him away while the other kids screamed. Then the teacher showed us a book in German with a bunch of scary illustrations of kids being punished by having their thumbs cut off with scissors or their eyes falling out of their heads to show us what happened when children didn't behave. Merry Christmas to us!

was Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol (1962).

I learned that in Meta ...



Bake

You stay outta there, okay?

And it killed my soul.



Bake

She remembered sitting through a very long church service where there was a tree lit by candles in the front with gifts for the children hanging on it. She remembered hoping for a doll. To keep her from being bored, the elderly man in the pew in front of her would surreptitiously hand her Necco wafers, LOL. This must have been in the very early 1900s...

I remember those! I remember buying them at the local IGA store. Haven't seen them in years.

I liked the licorice and the green ones. And they must have been around since the turn of the last century, since my grandmother was born in late 1900.

in my purse as I type this

Where did you get them?

We only had the multi flavored ones.

Neccos are still around & you can even buy them on the web, along with Dots, Chunky, lemonhead, and Nik'l Nips, those horridly sweet little wax bottles of fruit syrup.

As nolabear mentioned, there is a very old German alpine tradition of Krampus who went around after St. Nicholas and scared the bad children. My granddaughter and her friends in Denton TX made a great Krampus costume and changed him into a good guy who handed out over 700 gifts they had bought and wrapped to strangers in the main square of Denton on Dec. 5. A new tradition, I hope!

... that the Red and White colors of "Santa's suit" and the illusion that reindeer can fly come from partaking of northern European 'shrooms (Amanita muscaria, or "Red Fly Mushroom).

Thank the Shaman/Gnostics for that.



http://www.superiorconcept.org/Firstnight/germany.htm

I first read that story in the 80s and suddenly, Santa flying around on a sleigh pulled by reindeer made perfect sense. He was high. And so were the reindeer.

Rudolph, that little rebel obviously didn't partake of the 'shrooms. The red nose is a dead giveaway for a 5 Martini lunch habit!

It's really cool. I so miss New Orleans.

Very cool video. Thank you for posting I went to try and find it to send to my little Nieces but couldn't.

Thank you for starting it!!!

A little long but well worth it if you have the time ... Talking about the traditions of the Netherlands. Hilarious.

"For starters, Santa didn't USED to do anything..."

Hilarious!

After Thanksgiving we would have to make a trip to a the All State music festival in Ames IA (our daughters were performing there). On the way home we would listen to Six to Eight Black Men.

Never ceases to crack me up.

This is one of the best quotes: Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared.

Being I never saw one at the meat counter, I passed on preparing it. But considering the ingredients that went into it, it seems it could have been tasty.

would be:

$107,000

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Cost+everything+mentioned+Days+Christmas+tops+107K+swans+most/7609941/story.html

Seriously! Just the other day I was thinking about it. Every year it seems I would hear about the cost of the things for the 12 days of Christmas. A few days ago I remembered I hadn't heard it yet this year.

I was nine years old. I'll never forget that program. Black and white TV, fringe reception area, a little fuzzy, but TOTALLY magical and wonderful. Snow fell in the north Georgia Appalachians that night, and the next day we all tramped through the snowy woods to find the perfect Christmas tree: My parents, my grandfather, my older sister, and I, along with various dogs. That was probably a close to total happiness as I ever came!

I just noticed that this was my 3,000th post! I can't think of a better subject for it.

Example 1: Santa Claus rode around town on the top of a firetruck. Well, my little sister got so scared that she flipped out and pulled the curtains off the wall, and the rod and brackets came straight out and hit me in the head. Nice goose egg for Christmas pictures.

Example 2: One Christmas Eve, while the adults were downstairs partying, my sisters and I were naughty and up past bedtime waiting for Santa. I, in all my infinite wisdom, sat on a huge ball between my bed and my sister's trundle bed, and was bouncing around on it. Well, my sister got pissed about something, kicked the ball out from underneath me, and I fell, nearly slicing my ear off on the metal edge of the bed. I spent the wee hours of Christmas morning in the hospital, getting my ear stitched back together. I still have a scar. That was 30 years ago.

Example 3: I'm pretty sure I saw Rudolph's red nose on the roof of my house. And I was only 6 or so, so there was no alcohol involved.

Christmas begins at the sighting of the first star on the evening of the 24th of December.

Estonian Lutherans go to Christmas Eve services around 4 or 5 pm, then go home for their traditional dinner. Jõuluvana, whose name literally means Old Yule, leaves presents at homes while the families are in church. The majority of people in Estonia are non-religious. Many of their holiday traditions come from the old pagan celebration of Jõulud, a festival from the same origins as Yule.

The traditional Christmas Eve dinner usually includes roast pork, roasted potatoes, rye bread, sauerkraut, lingonberry jam and verivorst, blood sausage made with blood and barley stuffed into pig intestines. I was 12 when I found out what verivorst was. Gaak. Couldn't bring myself to touch it after that.

Every Dec. 24 - for more than 350 years - the president of Estonia declares the Christmas Peace, a tradition begun by Queen Kristina of Sweden in the 17th century.

It was the original War on Christmas