X-Nico

44 unusual facts about Christmas


Abies amabilis

The foliage has an attractive scent, and is sometimes used for Christmas decoration, including Christmas trees.

Anoplognathus pallidicollis

Adults are common in the summer months, particularly around Christmas, resulting in the common name of Christmas beetle for the species (and also for other members of its genus).

California Trout

Initially organized in the mid-1960s as a local unit of Trout Unlimited, the founders formed CalTrout during Christmas week of 1970 and filed papers of incorporation the following January.

Captain John's Harbour Boat Restaurant

The restaurant was open every day of the year, including all major holidays such as Christmas and New Year's Day.

Ceratopetalum

Two Australian species are among the best known, one being C. apetalum or coachwood, renowned as a timber tree, and C. gummiferum, the New South Wales Christmas bush, so named as it flowers in December.

Charles Cahier

He also wrote studies on Christmas and on Epiphany in Amide la religion (Paris, 1848–1849), and in his Calendrier populaire du temps passé in Revue de l'art chrétien (Paris, 1878).

Christmas beetle

They are known as Christmas beetles because they are abundant in both urban and rural areas close to Christmas.

Christmas club

The concept is that bank customers deposit a set amount of money each week into a special savings account, and receive the money back at the end of the year for Christmas shopping.

Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day

Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day was first published by Chapman & Hall in 1850.

Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, a Poem (1850) is, despite the title, often treated as two poems by Robert Browning, rather than as one poem in two parts.

Colorado Gold Kings

They also were the American representatives in the 1990 Tournoi du Mont-Blanc, a traditional tournament played around Christmas in several French Alps resorts.

Danny Seward

In December 2005, Danny was invited to sing alongside Elaine Paige and John Barrowman in a Christmas concert performed at the Birmingham Symphony Hall, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Ed Cullen

His most heart-warming essay concerns Christmas 1959, the last Christmas with his mother in which he failed to receive the shortwave radio that he was expecting.

Eid il-Burbara

The seeds germinate and grow up to around 6 inches in time for Christmas, when the shoots are used to decorate the nativity scene usually placed below the Christmas tree.

Fixed feast

A fixed feast is an annual celebration that is held on the same calendar date every year, such as Christmas, as distinguished from moveable feasts, such as Easter, whose calendar date varies.

Frode Andresen

On the January 22, 2006, Frode Andresen won the Golden Cup, which is a trophy awarded to the biathlete with the most points during the three world cup events after Christmas.

Georges Rousse

When he was 9 years old, Rousse received the legendary Kodak Brownie camera as a Christmas gift.

Gil Vicente

Though Leonor asked him to give an encore performance of the play at the Christmas matins, Vicente decided to write a new play for the occasion, the Auto Pastoril Castelhano ("Castilian Pastoral Act").

Gordon Moakes

In December 2009, Moakes, Paul Mullen (vocalist and guitarist of The Automatic) and William Bowerman (drummer of La Roux) worked in the studio together on a new side project, with Bloc Party on hiatus and both The Automatic and La Roux inactive over the Christmas break.

Graham Branch

Having made 109 appearances for them, with loan deals at Bury and Wigan Athletic along the way, he was released on a free transfer to Stockport County for the beginning of the 1998–99 season, and quickly arrived at Turf Moor around Christmas in 1998 when signed by the colourful manager Stan Ternent, following a falling-out with then Stockport manager, Gary Megson.

Hank Stuever

It centers around the lives of three different families in Frisco, Texas, during three consecutive Christmas seasons and the impact the holiday has on modern culture and the consumer economy.

Haya Doin'?

Joe Summa and Carmine Famiglietti were not songwriters, but actors, when they decided to write a song about the Christmas gifts that a stereotypical Italian American might receive.

Hayden Foxe

He was a regular in Portsmouth's side until a fractured bone in his foot ended his campaign at Christmas.

Kevin Paige

He also released a Christmas CD with his wife, Bethany Paige, entitled A W.O.W. Christmas in 2004, as well as a contemporary Christian disc entitled Faith, Hope, Love, Passion that same year.

Marcelo Moretto

During the 2005 Christmas and New Year break in Portugal, a lot was spoken in the press about Moretto's possible transfer to Benfica or F.C. Porto.

Margaritus of Brindisi

Margaritus and many nobles of the old guard, including Nicholas, Archbishop of Salerno, the son of Matthew of Ajello, and Tancred's widow, Sibylla of Acerra, and brief successor, William III, were present at the Christmas coronation.

Matty Fryatt

His first was becoming the first player in 42 years to score 20 goals before Christmas, and another being the first in 83 years to hit hat-tricks in successive matches.

Michael R. Collings

Collings has had multiple collections of his poetry published on subjects such as Mormon theology, Joseph Smith, Christmas, science fiction, and horror.

Michelle Bass

Over Christmas 2004, Bass played The Princess in the pantomime Aladdin at the Alban Arena in St Albans.

Peter P. Jurchak

His musicianship was often requested for church functions, and it soon became standard for him to play at events such as the Christmas Eve celebration at St. Adrian's.

Prostanthera lasianthos

They appear in late spring and summer, and specifically around Christmas time in Victoria.

Rita Walter

Four years later, in May 1970, she joined the ATWT cast as Deming (and her later married names Hughes Stallings Andropoulos Frazier) until her exit from the serial on Christmas Day 1981.

Robert De Cormier

He has also recorded several Christmas albums with his choral group, The Robert DeCormier Singers.

Roger Ewing

He also appeared that season as Eddie Fox in the episode "The Christmas Show" of ABC's short-lived The Bing Crosby Show, starring Bing Crosby and Beverly Garland, and in a third sitcom as well in the role of Norman in the episode entitled "Look Who's a Sailor" on CBS's short-lived The Baileys of Balboa.

Rosa Brítez

Doña Rosa creates fantastic shapes of clay, from the figures of Paraguayan mythology, plates representing the sun and the moon, Christmas houses, animals, and characteristic persons of the Paraguayan culture.

Samantha Bee

In December 2005, on The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly used a clip of Bee from The Daily Show as an example of "The War on Christmas", presenting it as having aired recently.

Sidney Myer

For the unemployed at Christmas, he financed a Christmas dinner for 10,000 people at the Royal Exhibition Building, including a gift for every child.

St. Thomas More Catholic Secondary School

The school also has a Christmas Miracle campaign where students in individual classes purchase gifts for the less-fortunate in Hamilton.

Summer vacation

Other holidays include around two weeks for Easter and around another two weeks for Christmas and New Year, as well as two midterms with one in October/November during the week of Halloween and one usually in the month of February.

Svala

She began singing publicly at the age of seven when she appeared on her father's Christmas album.

The Heart

In 2004 and 2005, the channel's regular format was temporarily replaced with a pop Christmas music format called "Holly" between Thanksgiving and Christmas; in 2006, Holly preempted XM's U-Pop channel instead and The Heart retained its normal format through December.

The Mystery of Cabin Island

A series of adventures begins for the Hardy Boys and their friends Chet and Biff after they are invited to spend Christmas vacation on Cabin Island at the invitation of its owner, Elroy Jefferson, as a reward for recovering Jefferson's car in The Shore Road Mystery.

Wendy's 3-Tour Challenge

ABC televised the event until 2009, showing the tournament tape-delayed on a weekend in December just before Christmas, with the first nine holes broadcast on Saturday, and the final nine holes on Sunday.

Zack Ward

He is known for his character Dave Scovil (Titus's stoner half-brother) on the FOX show Titus and as the bully Scut Farkus in the 1983 perennial Christmas movie A Christmas Story.


A Christmas Tale

On Christmas Day, Abel and Elizabeth discuss Elizabeth's longstanding depression, and Abel reads to her from the prologue to Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality about how well we know – or don't know – ourselves.

Annie Little

In Christmas 2010, TJX Companies aired a commercial for TJ Maxx and Marshalls, featuring Annie Little and the theme "There's a better way to Christmas shop".

Arthur Bridgett

Bridgett was a deeply religious man, and refused to play on Good Friday or Christmas Day throughout his career.

Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Trees

Salon writer Andrew Leonard said of "Attack of the Mutant Artificial Christmas Trees", "(the game is) diverting for about three nanoseconds — less, if you give in to the urge to pelt the annoying elf, for which you are unfairly punished".

Baryton. Gracias a la vida

# A La Huella A La Huella 02:58 (aka "La Peregrinacion"); villancico (Christmas song); composer: Ariel Ramírez; writer: Félix Luna

Carve Her Name with Pride

The poem, 'The Life That I Have', also known as 'Yours', recited to Violette by her husband Etienne, was once believed to have been written especially for the film, but was in fact the actual code poem given to her in March 1944 by the SOE cryptographer Leo Marks, and written by him on Christmas Eve 1943 in memory of his girlfriend, Ruth, who had recently died in a car crash.

Celebrate the Magic

The show premiered with the original Christmas segment from The Magic, the Memories and You.

Christmas Canon

"Christmas Canon" is a Christmas song by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) from their 1998 album The Christmas Attic.

Christmas Cottage

It tells the story of the inspiration behind Thomas Kinkade's painting The Christmas Cottage, and how the artist was motivated to begin his career after discovering his mother was in danger of losing their family home.

Christmas Island shrew

The Christmas Island shrew (Crocidura trichura), also known as Christmas Island musk-shrew is an extremely rare or possibly extinct shrew from Christmas Island.

Christmas Market, Stuttgart

Stuttgart Christmas Market, known in German as the Stuttgarter Weihnachtsmarkt is a Christmas market that takes place every year during Advent in the German city of Stuttgart.

CJGV-FM

On December 1, 2011, the station flipped to an all Christmas format for the holiday season, with announced plans to switch to adult contemporary after January 1, 2012.

David Twohill

Twohill, with his wife Sue, was in the national news on Christmas Day 2001 when their house was lost in bushfires—a benefit gig, Bird's Big Burnout, occurred at Revesby in early 2002 and a four piece Midnight Oil minus Peter Garrett performed.

Donna VanLiere

Donna VanLiere is an American author of fiction, primarily novels about Christmas.

ECWA Hospital Egbe

Tommy and wife arrived Egbe two days before Christmas 1915 from their honey moon, they didn’t realise how exciting Christmas Day was going to be.

Erich Bey

Promoted to Rear Admiral, on Christmas Day, 25 December 1943, Bey led a task force consisting of the battleship Scharnhorst and the Z29, Z30, Z33, Z34 and Z38 out of Alta Fjord in Operation Ostfront.

Griffith College Students' Union

The Students' Union organizes a number of different events throughout the year from Freshers Week, Halloween Ball, Thanksgiving, Diwali, Eid, Christmas Ball, SHAG Week and RAG Week and the formal Griffith Ball which takes place towards the end of the year.

Helleborus niger

Although the flowers resemble wild roses (and despite its common name), Christmas rose does not belong to the rose family (Rosaceae).

Home Alone 4

Home Alone 4 (also known as Home Alone: Taking Back the House) is a 2002 American made-for-television Christmas family comedy film directed by Rod Daniel, which first aired on ABC on November 3, 2002.

Imagineering Australia

November 1989: The MyPC, basically an Ultra XT using cut-price components and secondhand CPUs in brightly coloured chassis, was released for sale through Grace Brothers and Myer stores at Christmas.

J. I. M. Stewart

Christmas at Candleshoe was the basis for the 1977 film Candleshoe starring Jodie Foster, Helen Hayes and David Niven.

Jan Werner Danielsen

On the Christmas-concert tour in 2004 he now was a solo artist and the Norwegian Bishop Rosemarie Köhn was with him on selected concerts.

Jonathan Watson

A Christmas 2012 object of his satire was Donald Trump of whom Watson commented "mastering the billionaire's hairstyle was harder than getting the voice right".

June Jackson Christmas

Dr. Christmas was appointed Commissioner of Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services on August 16, 1972 by Mayor of New York City John Lindsay.

Kris Kringle

Christkind or Christkindl, the Austrian and German Christmas gift-bringer, the Christ Child

Lee Trundle

Trundle also performed 'Let it Snow' for Preston's 2012 Christmas light switch on, before turning on the lights alongside fellow players, Matt Cardle and Russell Watson.

Lewin's Mead

The 13th century St Bartholomew's Hospital which became Bristol Grammar School in the 16th century is situated at the bottom of Christmas Steps.

M. William Howard, Jr.

Howard conducted Christmas services for the U.S. Embassy personnel held hostage in Tehran, Iran.

Michael Roberds

He performed the role of Big Bird in the school play "Christmas on Sesame Street" at age five.

Monique Dupree

Since then, she's been in over 60 films including American Gangster, Life Support, The Replacements, Satan Hates You, and Bikini Bloodbath Christmas.

Natalia Tena

She hosted a behind-the-scenes featurette entitled "Trailing Tonks" for the subsequent DVD and Blu-ray release, and is credited as producer and director of the featurette, in which she also performs an original Christmas-themed blues song on guitar, which she composed while working as a busker on the London Underground.

No Census, No Feeling

This is a reference to an event in 1939 when Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to an earlier Thursday in November to lengthen the Christmas shopping season.

Not This Year

It was featured as the closing track on the Christmas album, Acoustic Hearts of Winter.

Rachel Feldman

As a screenwriter, she written the television films Post Modern Romance (1993), She's No Angel (2001) starring Tracey Gold, Recipe for a Perfect Christmas (2005) starring Christine Baranski and Love Notes (2007) starring Laura Leighton.

Rodolfo Morales

In 1965 while organizing a Christmas party at the home of a sculptor friend, Geles Cabrera, he used collages as decorations.

Rosemary Leach

In 1982 she played Aunt Fenny in The Jewel in the Crown and 1986 in a Jack Rosenthal British television Christmas play Day To Remember.

Ruth Christmas

In her favoured distance of 880-yards or 800-metres, Christmas had a longstanding rivalry with Gladys Lunn, and finally beat her in the 1933 British Championships.

Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy

Also in 1992, Travis Tritt covered both the single and its B-side for his Christmas album A Travis Tritt Christmas: Loving Time of the Year.

Sonora Ponceña

In the years following 2000, La Sonora Ponceña participated in a large number of events throughout Puerto Rico, including Fiestas Patronales, private parties, graduation parties, and corporate Christmas and holiday parties.

The Invisible Band

"Flowers in the Window" is featured in the 2004 film Saved!, second-season episode of Merseybeat (2002), and as background music during a scene of the 2002 Only Fools and Horses Christmas Special "Strangers on the Shore".

The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas

The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas is a 1968 Christmas album by Frank Sinatra and featuring his children, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Nancy Sinatra, and Tina Sinatra.

Thee Majesty

Mary Never Wanted Jesus was a special Christmas-themed limited release that contains some different tracks and running orders on the vinyl and CD versions.

There Goes the Groom

"There Goes The Groom" is a 1997 Christmas special of the BBC sitcom Last of the Summer Wine first shown on 28 December 1997.

Two in a Million/You're My Number One

It made its debut at number 5 in the run up to Christmas selling almost 100,000 and peaked at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart the following year.

Wishing You Happiness and Prosperity

This song was included in the Pink Martini Christmas album Joy to the World released in 2010, under the title "Congratulations - A Happy New Year Song" with vocals by China Forbes and Timothy Yuji Nishimoto.

Worth Avenue

Adonidia or "Christmas palms" replaced them, but they were not in proportion to the buildings on the street.

Yogi Bear's All Star Comedy Christmas Caper

When Huckleberry Hound and his friends Hokey Wolf, Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, and Snooper and Blabber visit Jellystone Park for Christmas, they discover Yogi Bear and Boo Boo have escaped from Jellystone and hidden out in a department store, where Yogi is posing as a Santa Claus.

You Would Have Loved This

You Would Have Loved This is Tarja's second solo single which is a dedication to her mother and predates the release of her Christmas album, Henkäys Ikuisuudesta.

Zaritsas: Russian Women in New York

Produced by Elena Beloff, co-produced by Ken Christmas and Vincent D'Onofrio, cinematography by Eun-ah Lee; film editing by Ben Abrams; original music by Oliver James and Robert Eldridge, additional music by Tony Sokol and the song "Budem Vmeste" was written by Elena Beloff and produced by Tony Sokol and Joe Bohmer.