Fun Christmas Facts

Learning some Christmas facts from American history is always fun! Although Christmas is a holiday that is observed all over the world, Americans have some fun facts that are uniquely our own! Stick around and you can learn a few fun Christmas facts to amuse your friends and family this year!

Christmas has become such a hustle and bustle time, as well as extremely commercialized. But did you know that it first started to become a retail holiday in the early 1800's? Or that Santa appeared in stores as early as 1850? Read on to find out when the first electric Christmas tree lights were used in the U.S...

or how many candy canes are produced each year in America.

Find out the answer to those trivia questons and learn more Christmas facts here. There are so many fun facts about this wonderful holiday!

• Christopher Columbus named a bay after St. Nicholas way back in 1492
• "A Visit From St. Nicholas", the famous poem by Reverend Clement C Moore, was first published in 1823
• In 1826, an amateur botanist and first ambassador to Mexico named Joel Poinsett brought a beautiful red flowering plant back to America. It was later named Poinsettia (Poinsettia pulcherrima) after him.
• President Andrew Jackson had what he called a Christmas "frolic" for his kids in 1834. The party included an indoor "snowball" fight using cotton balls
• Alabama became the first state to recognize Christmas as an official holiday in 1836
• Some of our favorite Christmas carols were written in the 1850's - "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" (1851); "We Three Kings of Orient Are" (1859)
• Louis Prang, a Prussian immigrant and lithographer in Boston is believed to be the first American company to offer Christmas cards in 1875
• Thomas Edison was the first person to produce a strand of electric lights. In 1880, he placed his lights outside of his Menlo Park Laboratory during the Christmas season. It took another 40 years before electric Christmas lights became a regular holiday tradition.
• The first string of Christmas tree lights was produced by Edward H. Johnson in 1882
• In 1889 President Benjamin Harrison was the first President to set up an indoor Christmas tree (this is according to the White House - other references are made to Franklin Pierce, but I can't verify them).
• In 1894, President Grover Cleveland asked for electric Christmas tree lights to be put on the White House Christmas tree
• President Taft's children helped decorate the first Christmas tree on the state floor (in the Blue Room) in 1909
• The annual lighting of the National Christmas tree began in 1923, during the Coolidge administration
• Since 1929, First Ladies have had a tradition of decorating the official White House Christmas tree. First Lady Lou Henry Hoover began the tradition
• President Ronald Reagan began the tradition of authorizing the first official White House ornament in 1981
• The United States produces 1.76 billion, (with a "b"!) candy canes each year
• The United States Postal Service delivers 15.8 billion letters, cards and packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve
• American military bases all over the world receive 30 million pounds of holiday mail each year
• Americans buy 25 to 30 million real and 8 to 12 million artificial trees each Christmas season

Sources: Library of Congress - www.loc.gov; National Park Service - www.nps.gov; History - www.history.com; White House Historical Association - www.whitehousehistory.org; City of Sumter, South Carolina - www.sumter-sc.com; Greeting Card.org - www.greetingcard.org; Connor Prairie.org - www.connerprairie.org

To read more fun facts about Christmas lights, visit the Library of Congress website.