We wake up 24 times – hot, then it’s Christmas Day! In order to bridge the waiting time until then, there are 24 units from the Christmas facts series for Advent small talk.
Berlin – A huge fir tree in the shopping center, weird Christmas gifts in the classic sketch and a red-nosed reindeer to color in – here are the details and much more:
How about if there were always gingerbread hearts and speculoos in the supermarket? Not worth striving for: only two percent of the most recently surveyed adults in Germany would like that.
According to the Guinness Book of Records, a 65-meter-high Douglas fir that stood in a shopping center in Seattle, USA, is still considered the tallest Christmas tree in the world today.
Goose in the oven, Christmas lights on, TV on. Is there a threat of a blackout? No. According to the responsible federal association, “possibly higher electricity consumption over Christmas” will be overcompensated by lower consumption in the industry.
The historically documented census of Quirinius in the Gospel of Luke does not match other references in the Christmas story. Not bad, according to theology. For them, the only thing that counts is the symbolism.
During the Christmas season, a star with a special geometry shines out of many windows: a Moravian star. The idea for this arose in the 19th century in a boarding school run by the Moravian Brethren.
Santa Claus and the advertising campaign
Did Coca-Cola invent Santa Claus? No. The red and white robe actually goes back to an advertising campaign by the company. But the figure already existed in Germany in the 19th century.
The leaves in “O Tannenbaum” are mostly green, but in some versions they are faithful. This formulation comes from a love affair from the beginning of the 19th century. A few years later a poet added it and made a Christmas carol out of it.
Mail for Santa Claus? Can you send it to Himmelpfort in Germany, for example. Santa Claus’ official post office can be found near the Finnish town of Rovaniemi on the Arctic Circle.
Lauscha in Thuringia is known for its glassblowing craft, especially for hand-blown Christmas tree decorations. Its production has been part of Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage since 2021.
The crew of the American Apollo 8 mission broadcast Christmas greetings live from the orbit of the moon on December 24, 1968. Most of the message was that the three astronauts quoted the biblical book of Genesis on the creation of the earth.
Every year on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, millions of red land crabs walk from the interior of their home island to the coast, where they mate. They are also called Christmas Island crabs.
Nuclear power plants and suction blowers
In Loriot’s classic sketch “Christmas at Hoppenstedts”, the Dicki child gets a toy nuclear power plant, his mother a “Heinzelmann suction blower”, father various ties and grandpa a record player.
Bing Crosby’s version of “White Christmas” (the composer was Irving Berlin) is the best-selling single. According to the Guinness Book, it was bought an estimated 50 million times by 2012.
Was the € 14 million Christmas tree in a hotel in Marbella, Spain, the most expensive in the world? The exclusively decorated creation by designer Debbie Wingham has not (yet) made it into the Guinness book.
Johann Sebastian Bach “parodied” in his Christmas Oratorio. No, he wasn’t making fun of anything. In the Baroque era, that meant rather that Bach used pieces in them that he had composed for earlier works.
The poinsettia is in red on many window sills. The conspicuous colored parts are not flowers, but bracts – leaves above the normal ones, which differ in color and shape.
I’m dreaming of a white … “exactly, that thing about snow often remains a dream in the German lowlands. This is due to the mild Atlantic air around the festival, explains the German Weather Service.
Famous reindeer
The red-nosed Rudolf, probably the most famous reindeer in the world, was created as the protagonist for a Christmas coloring book in an American department store in 1939.
Stollen – a typical German Christmas cookie. The record for the longest in the world also goes to a German company. But the 72-meter-long yeast colossus was baked in the Netherlands.
The last traditional tinsel made of tinfoil, i.e. thin tin foil, was produced in Germany in 2015. In the end it was only a few hundred kilos a year, according to the manufacturer at the time.
Some love it, others hate it: “Last Christmas” by Wham! from 1984. The accompanying video was shot in the Swiss Alpine town of Saas-Fee. The crew wanted to drive around there in the stretch limousine – but nothing came of that: the place was and is car-free.
The most popular Christmas tree in Germany bears his name in memory of the Finnish biologist Alexander von Nordmann. The seeds of the trees grown in this country mostly come from Georgia.
“Silent Night, Holy Night” was sung for the first time in a church in Oberndorf, Austria. In its place there has been a chapel for over 80 years, to which mainly tourists from Asia make pilgrimages.
Is it all over on the second holiday? Not from a church perspective: liturgically, the Christmas season for Catholics ends on the Sunday after Epiphany (January 6th), in the Protestant Church even a few Sundays later. dpa
