Christmas Traditions and Holiday Fun Facts

From pickle ornaments to Christmas trees adorned with spiders to Clark Griswold’s utility bill, we've got some holiday tidbits for you to share and enjoy.

For instance, did you know a 1978 Paris assassination attempt on Bulgarian defector Vladimir Kostov is thought to have been foiled when his thick sweater prevented exposure to a pellet of lethal poison? It's something to think about while layering up for the holidays or to drop into conversational lulls. We’ve pulled together 30 more seasonal factoids to deploy as needed; good luck.

Each November, every single household in Iceland receives a copy of the Bókatíðindi — a book bulletin featuring every single new title published in Icelandic that year. Christmas-gifters-to-be can then pick and choose among those reads to take advantage of the Jólabókaflóð, or “Christmas book flood.” The practice began in 1944 when World War II-era import duties made non-paper gifts difficult to acquire and prohibitively expensive. Today, it’s a celebration of Iceland’s spectacular literary culture (and an excellent way to settle in for a winter evening).

Ukrainian tradition holds that eight-legged adornments are good luck. According to a folk tale, a passel of friendly spiders once helped an impoverished family decorate their Christmas tree, and their webs turned to silver and gold. New York City’s Ukrainian Museum holds annual ornament workshops, and the dazzling arachnids are always the runaway favorites. Can’t make it to the Big Apple? Adopt a gleaming critter like this one from Etsy seller BeadJeweledSpiders.

In the Mexican state of Oaxaca, master carvers spend December 23rd whittling away at root vegetables to create radish-based representations of everything from Biblical figures to domestic tableaux and fantastic mythical creatures. That evening is Noche de los Rabanos (Night of the Radishes), and tourists and guests admire the artisans’ entries before judges award official prizes to the best in show. The competition began in 1897 as a way to showcase local agriculture at Oaxaca City’s Christmas Market. A century later, it’s a one-of-a-kind festival known the world over.

If you answer a knock at the door and find a hooded, jaw-clacking mare’s skull with baubles for eyes and a mane of streamers, consider asking her in. Your visitor is the Mari Lwyd, a mischievous figure that’s paraded from house to house in midwinter in parts of Wales, and showing her hospitality is said to bring your household good luck. Written records mention the Mari Lwyd for the first time in 1800, but some believe the Mari has pagan origins that predate Christianity; all agree that the sight of her is unforgettable.

In National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) wrapped his house (and Santa and his reindeer, naturally) with 25,000 lights. Energy experts estimate that in 2022, keeping that mighty display lit each night for the month of December would ring in at about $9.52 per day, or about $295 for the month.

Beginning at 7pm on the Friday after Thanksgiving and then nightly until the new year, film fans can visit 173 Duane Lane in Wadsworth, Ohio, where the Wadsworth Griswold House pays homage to Clark’s vision. Taking in its electric majesty is free, but Greg and Rachel Osterland, the homeowners behind the display, fundraise to cure cystic fibrosis if you’d like to show your appreciation and support a worthy cause.

Alcohol was strictly forbidden at West Point in 1826, but cadets managed to smuggle about four gallons of whiskey into the academy to fortify their eggnog on Christmas Eve. The late-night drunken mayhem that ensued — and the compounding chaos of authorities unsuccessfully containing that mayhem — nearly destroyed the school’s North Barracks. Nineteen cadets were expelled for their part in the Eggnog Riot, and barracks were thereafter built to make rampaging between floors much more difficult.

On Dec. 24, 1966, New York City’s WPIX filled three hours of airtime with a cheery holiday blaze in an ornate hearth. Filmed at the mayor’s residence and processed as a 17-second loop, the crackling fire was a hit with local viewers (many of whom lived in apartments without fireplaces) and staffers (who were able to be home with their families while the footage rolled). That initial film deteriorated and was replaced a few years later by similar footage shot in northern California, but Hizzoner’s house launched a cottage industry of festive “fires.” They’re atmospheric, to be sure, but you might also consider syncing one up because…

In a 2014 Evolutionary Psychology study involving virtual fireplaces, researchers found that seeing and listening to a fire on a screen lowered subjects’ blood pressure — and the longer they watched, the more they were able to relax. To enjoy similar effects in festive, non-laboratory conditions, keep your holiday playlist on pause and listen to the sounds of the faux fire itself: the study authors noted that when their virtual blazes were muted, participants grew bored and restless.

Faced with the question of whether or not Bruce Willis’s fictional holiday-season terrorist-thwarting qualifies him as the hero of a Christmas movie, 40.79% of Americans in a 2019 survey said yippee-ki-yay. Responses varied widely from state to state — John McClane gets the Yule nod from just 17% of those polled in Louisiana and Mississippi, while 76% of those in North Dakota contend that he decks the halls.

The mountain village of Bethel, Maine, is extremely committed to seasonal constructions. In 1999, locals set a Guinness world record by building the world’s tallest snow person: “Angus, King of the Mountain” (named for Maine’s then-Governor Angus King) was more than 10 stories tall. They broke that record in February 2008 with “Olympia SnowWoman” (above), an 11-story giantess named for then-Senator Olympia Snowe. Olympia’s eyelashes were skis, her scarf was 130 feet long, her arms were 25-foot spruce trees, and she didn’t melt until July 30!

The cherubic, potentially tragic youngest Cratchit child who helped thaw Ebenezer Scrooge’s heart in Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” wasn’t always called Tiny Tim. He first appeared in the 1843 manuscript as Little Fred, which some have speculated was inspired by Dickens’s younger brother Frederick, his late brother Alfred and a nephew who suffered from poor health. As legend has it, Dickens’s wife suggested that the character should have a more alliterative name — and so he does.

The moment the Earth is farthest from the sun isn’t merely recognized as a date: It’s also a specific time, observed as the precise instant the North Pole is aimed farthest away from the sun on the 23.5° tilt of the Earth's axis.

On the first day of Advent (in late November or early December), towns and villages in Sweden kick off the holiday season by constructing massive straw Yule goats (“Julbock” in Swedish) that date back to Pagan rites and preside over seasonal festivities. The town of Gävle, pictured here, builds the most famous Julbock of all — and protects it tirelessly from would-be pranksters and arsonists, who have inflicted goat-sculpture damage more than 37 times since 1966.

An 18-page, small-print document created by the Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command to instruct contractors producing fruitcakes for U.S. troops was placed in the Congressional Record in 1985. Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia presented the recipe to illustrate the Pentagon’s expensive habit of going into unnecessary detail, calling it “The Perfect Specification, Cost-Is-No-Object Fruitcake.” Since the document is nonclassified, you can hunt it down and follow it — if you’re prepared to make sure your candied cherries’ diameters exceed 12.7 millimeters.

If you find yourself at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, consider visiting Gallery 116, where you’ll find a basket from the tomb of Hatnefer, an Egyptian woman who was laid to rest around 1473 B.C. Excavated in Thebes in the 1930s, it contained a cake of dates and raisins. Unfortunately for the Pentagon, we have no way of knowing what their diameters would have been.

Want to know if dry-harvested cranberries — that is, the kind that are picked fresh and sold in grocery store produce sections — are damaged or spoiled? Firm, ripe specimens have pockets of air that will make them bounce when dropped, while rotten and bruised berries will land with a thud.

Gengenbach, a picturesque German town on the western edge of the Black Forest, draws throngs of holiday-season tourists each year with a magical countdown. From Nov. 30 through Dec. 23, its Baroque town hall becomes a life-size advent calendar: Each night, a new tableau is revealed in one of its windows.

In the decades of globalization following World War II, Japan’s fast-food industry boomed — and since 1974, KFC (known then as Kentucky Fried Chicken) has encouraged locals to celebrate what they consider a secular holiday with “Kentucky for Christmas.” Enthusiastic marketing and convenient similarities between KFC’s flavor profiles and those of traditional Japanese dishes have nudged the trend along for more than half a century now, and in 2018, KFC Japan’s sales exceeded $63 million between Dec. 20 and Dec. 25 alone.

According to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, there are an average of 160 decorating-related injuries per day during the holiday season — and almost half of those incidents involve falls. Keep it slow, steady and stable out there, everyone. And if you want to string lights around your baseboards this year, we think that sounds cool, too.

The White House Historical Association reports that the first known Christmas tree at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. occupied the second floor Oval Room in 1889 when Benjamin Harrison was president. The room was used as a family parlor and library at the time, and the tree was decorated with candles for President Harrison’s grandchildren.

Historians note that Celtic Druids associated mistletoe with health and procreation because it thrived throughout the year and appeared to need no nourishment. They administered it to humans and animals as a fertility aid and hung it above doorways for luck. The Greeks and Romans, in turn, believed that the goddess of the moon wore a mistletoe crown that represented fertility and immortality.

Mistletoe “kisses” the birds that eat its berries: The seeds spread through excretions and from sticking to birds' beaks and feet. The birds then scrape off the sticky berries onto branches and that helps mistletoe spread from tree to tree. The plant’s super-nutritious leaves, in turn, attract insects when they fall to the ground — and those insects attract even more birds.

Though Eartha Kitt’s slinky single was an instant hit and the top-selling holiday song of 1953, it was also considered genuinely scandalous: “Nobody had ever done that before — had written a song about a woman who is obviously a mistress of a man, and saying what she wanted,” said its author, Phil Springer. Some Southern cities prohibited local stations from playing the song, and politicians protested Kitt’s performance at a New York reception for King Paul and Princess Frederica of Greece. (There is no record of “Santa Baby” troubling the royals.)

As they orbited Earth on Dec. 6, 1965, Gemini 6 astronauts Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford serenaded the planet with “Jingle Bells,” the first song performed and broadcast (by humans) in space. The harmonica and bells they used are now in the Smithsonian Institute.

Chris Boyd and Jordan Birch officially invited poorly dressed revelers to join them at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom in 2002. That party launched a new genre of aesthetically displeasing revels that now feels timeless, or deathless. Their aim, they said, was to throw “a cheesy, feel-good, festive party, and the sweaters were a main ingredient of that.”

Looking to streamline your holiday recycling process? Consider How to Eat Your Christmas Tree, an innovative recipe collection that will guide you through 30 recipes, and guide your greenery through you. Take a fresh approach to sustainability while preparing delicacies featuring pine (a candidate for Christmas Tree Pickles), fir (a fine choice for curing filleted fish) and spruce (which can lend a delicate, vanilla-like flavor to ice cream).

In 1882, just two years after Thomas Edison patented the light bulb, his business partner Edward Hibberd Johnson had a bright idea. Hand-wiring strings of red, white and blue bulbs to replace the candles that then illuminated Christmas trees created a new market for Edison’s invention and made holiday decorating considerably safer. Those early generations of lights were large, short and very expensive: In 1900, a string of 16 flame-shaped bulbs cost $12, or the equivalent of about $350 today.

Legend has it that Germans have a time-honored holiday practice of hiding a single glass pickle ornament on the Christmas tree; the family member who finds the pickle gets to open their gifts first and will have good luck in the year to come. Germans have it rather differently: In a 2016 survey, 91% of respondents said they’d never heard of the Weihnachtsgurke (“Christmas cucumber”). That’s because the "Old World tradition" can most likely be traced back to a clever ornament marketer. In fairness, he or she can now be considered a marketing legend.

Agencies in midwestern and northern states are reducing the use of salt as a de-icer for winter roads, given its negative environmental impact. Spraying liquid salt brine has proven gentler and more effective than scattering salt, and officials in Polk County, Wisconsin, have innovated even more. Since 2008, they’ve sprayed their roads with a mixture used in the cheesemaking process and sourced as a byproduct from a local dairy.