Venere.com is one of the leading hotel reservation systems for Europe. The Italian-based company was recently purchased by Expedia. Here is Venere’s collection of fun facts about Christmas and how the most important holiday of the year is a celebrated around the world.
Where does Xmas come from? How long does it take to grow a Christmas tree? How many dogs get Christmas gifts? What is Pepparkakor?
Did you know that?
XMAS — In Greek, X means Christ; that is where the word “Xmas” comes from!
Christmas World Records
The world’s largest Christmas present was the Statue of Liberty. The French gave it to the US in 1886. It is 46.5 meters high and weighs 225 tons!
“Green” Christmas
It can take up to 15 years to grow an average-sized tree of 6 to 7 feet, sometimes as little as 4 years, but the average growing time is 7!
Christmas Songs
Bing Crosby ‘s ‘White Christmas’ was released in 1942 and is considered to be the best-selling Christmas song of all time!
Christmas Statistics
-
• 1 in 10 – The number of the presents received that will be broken by the New Year
• 7 in 10 – The number of dogs that get Christmas gifts from their owners
• 33′ – The average time spent per person on last-minute purchases
• 25 – The average number of minutes spent in queues when Christmas shopping
• 832 – The number of homes Santa visits every second to deliver all his presents
• 5340 – Average number of times Visa Cards are used every minute during Christmas time
2010 Average Budget for Christmas Presents
USA: €520 (US$686) – UK: €474 (US$625) – GERMANY: €270 (US$356) –
ITALY: €325 (US$430) – FRANCE: €366 (US$483) – SPAIN: €383 (US$505) – NETHERLANDS: €206 (US$272)
Traditional Christmas Sweets
• FRANCE: Buche de Noel (a Génoise or other sponge cake, baked in a large Swiss roll pan)
• USA: Pumpkin Cake (with cinnamon and ginger, frosted with cream cheese frosting)
• SPAIN: Nougat (made with sugar or honey, roasted nuts)
• HUNGARY: Beigli (roll of sweet yeast bread with a dense, rich, bittersweet filling)
• ITALY: Panettone (is a type of sweet bread loaf originally from Milan)
• SWEDEN: Pepparkakor (heart-star and goat-shaped gingerbread biscuit)
• UK: Christmas Pudding (steamed pudding, with dried fruit and nuts, usually made with suet)
• PORTUGAL: Pain Perdu (French toast made with bread and eggs, milk, sugar and cinnamon)
• GERMANY: Lebkuchen (large cookies made of honey)
A link to Venere’s page on Christmas facts.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
How could they not identify the fruitcake as the traditional USA Christmas ‘sweet’ ?
And I don’t know any middle class families that only spend $686 on gifts for Christmas – try more like $1,000- $2,000 (Blame easy credit, and it doesn’t help seeing all those smarmy Lexus and Mercedes commercials inferring the rest are getting luxury cars on Christmas morn).
Another fun fact: NORAD tracks Santa every Christmas Eve
To be fair to the dutch chistmas as far as gifts goes is 2nd banana to santaclauseve (6/12) especialy for kids, christmas is more for adults
Lebkuchen………..”made with honey” Not the taste I know. This is also ginger based!
The Greek word for “Christ” is not “X”, it is “Χριστός”. Abbreviating it as “X” is not correct grammatically (although I can’t see anyone saying “Χριστόςmas”).