How The Christmas Traditions Got Their Started - Christmas Facts

Christmas nowadays is the most well - known all over the world. And on Christmas, there are so many traditions such as Christmas trees, cookies, sweaters, etc,. However, We don’t know where they’ve got started and Christmas’s history is an undiscovered thing. In this post, we’re going to provide some information about Christmas Traditions. 

Christmas Trees

 Decorated trees go back to Germany in the Middle Ages, with German and other European settlers inspired Christmas trees in America by the first years of the 19th century. A survey by the American Christmas Tree Association, brought out that 77 percent of U.S. households decorated a Christmas tree in their home. Among the trees on display, only 19 percent were real.

Elf on the Shelf 

Each year, moms and dads have either joyously or begrudgingly been hiding a toy elf each night from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  Since  2005 when Carol Aebersold and her daughter, Chanda Bell, published the book Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition that comes with the toy, more than 13 million elves have been “adopted”. Social media has even contributed in inspiring some parents to set up elaborate scenarios for their elves

Ugly Christmas Sweaters 

This tradition really gained steam in the 1980s. You may not know the ugly sweater industry is a multi-million business, with websites such as Tipsy Elves, retailers including Macy’s, Kohl’s and Target, and even food chains jumping on the ugly bandwagon.

Cookies and Milk for Santa -

 While leaving treats for Santa and his reindeer dates back to ancient Norse mythology, Americans began to sweeten up to the tradition in the 1930s. It’s considered  as a sign of showing gratitude during a time of struggle.

Candy Canes 

Candy Canes were from Germany in the final years of the 1600s.  Whether devoured as a treat or decorated on the Christmas tree, candy canes are the best - selling non-chocolate candy during December. The red and white peppermint sticks arrived stateside in 1847, when a German-Swedish immigrant in Wooster, Ohio placed them on a tree. By the 1950s, an automated candy cane-making machine was invented, cementing their mass appeal.

Door Wreaths 

The evergreen Christmas wreath, often adorned with boughs of holly, eventually took on Christian meaning, with the circular shape representing eternal life. Time to time,  wreaths have changed with thousands of types, which come in all varieties, from flowers and fruit to glass balls and ribbon to artificial and themed, and are most often seen as a secular winter tradition.

Christmas Lights 

 Edward Hibberd Johnson, Thomas Edison’s friend, who had the bright idea of stringing bulbs around a Christmas tree in New York in 1882. 32 years later, the lights were being mass produced and now some 150 million sets of lights are sold in the U.S. each year.

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Some Facts about Christmas 

Why do we kiss under the mistletoe?

The custom of stealing a Christmas kiss under the mistletoe has its clearest connection with Norse mythology, in which Frigg, the goddess of love, promised to kiss any creature that passed beneath the evergreen sprig after it was used to revive her son, Baldur, from the dead (after initially killing him). The Celtic Druids also saw mistletoe, which blossoms in the winter, as a sacred symbol of vivacity and prescribed it for fertility issues. The modern tradition of meeting under the mistletoe started in England and has won over surreptitious smoochers worldwide. However, if someone tells you that they meet you Under Mistletoe, that means you are warned. 

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' began as a marketing campaign

In 1939, retail giant Montgomery Ward came up with the idea of writing its own Christmas book to hand out to kids during the coming holiday shopping season. The task fell to copywriter Robert May, who took inspiration from his daughter’s love of the reindeers at the zoo and his own childhood as a small, shy kid who was never invited to play sports. More than 2 million copies of the original “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” illustrated booklet were distributed in 1939 and the character instantly became a beloved part of American Christmas lore