49 Fun Facts About Christmas by the Numbers

If every gift in The Twelve Days of Christmas is repeated daily, how many gifts are sent in total?

364 gifts in all: each day's presents are repeated on every later day, so the twelve cumulative verses add up to 364, one short of a full year.

How many gold rings are given in The Twelve Days of Christmas?

The 1780 text says "gold"; "golden" caught on in North America after Mitch Miller's 1961 recording.

How many reindeer pull Santa's sleigh in the 1823 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas?

The poem introduced most of the modern Santa; Rudolph did not join the team until 1939.

In what year was A Visit from St. Nicholas first published?

1823: the poem appeared anonymously in the Troy Sentinel on 23 December that year; Clement Clarke Moore acknowledged it in 1837, though some scholars credit Henry Livingston Jr.

Rudolph is usually counted as which number reindeer on Santa's team?

He is the youngest as well, and his nose leads the sleigh on foggy Christmas Eves.

In what year did Robert L. May create Rudolph for the Montgomery Ward department store?

1939: May, a Montgomery Ward copywriter, wrote the Rudolph booklet for the store's holiday giveaway; Johnny Marks's song followed in 1949 and the stop-motion TV special in 1964.

How many copies of the Rudolph booklet did Montgomery Ward hand out in its first year?

2.4 million copies went out free to Montgomery Ward shoppers in the booklet's first season, a giveaway so popular the store reissued it once wartime paper shortages ended.

How many spirits does Marley tell Scrooge will visit him in A Christmas Carol?

Past, Present and Yet to Come; Marley's own ghost makes four visitors in all.

In what year was A Christmas Carol published?

It came out on 19 December and had sold out by Christmas Eve.

How many weeks did Dickens take to write A Christmas Carol?

He began in October 1843 and finished the last pages in early December, "at white heat".

Into how many "staves" is A Christmas Carol divided?

Dickens used the musical word instead of chapters to fit the "carol" of the title.

How many candles are on a traditional Advent wreath?

One is lit each Sunday of Advent; some wreaths add a fifth white Christ candle in the middle for Christmas Day.

How many little doors are on a standard Advent calendar?

24 doors, one for each day from 1 December to Christmas Eve; Munich printer Gerhard Lang sold the first commercial printed calendars in the early 1900s and added little doors in the 1920s.

How many bulbs were on Edward Johnson's first electrically lit Christmas tree in 1882?

80 bulbs: Johnson, an Edison associate, hand-wired eighty red, white and blue lamps the size of walnuts onto a revolving tree in his New York home; the White House followed with electric lights in 1895.

About how many LED lights are hung on the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree?

About 50,000 multicoloured LED lights cover the tree, strung on miles of wire and switched on at the televised lighting ceremony each late November or early December.

How much does the 2018 Swarovski star atop the Rockefeller Center tree weigh?

900 pounds: the Swarovski star Daniel Libeskind designed for the 2018 season carries three million crystals on 70 spikes and weighs about 900 pounds.

Since what year has the Rockefeller Center tree been an annual tradition?

1933: construction workers put up an unofficial tree on the muddy site in 1931, and the first formal lighting ceremony in 1933 began the annual tradition.

How old is Kevin McCallister in Home Alone?

He defends the family's suburban Chicago house from the Wet Bandits after everyone flies to Paris without him.

In what year was Home Alone released?

1990: Home Alone opened on 16 November 1990 and held the Guinness record as the highest-grossing live-action comedy until The Hangover Part II in 2011.

How much did Home Alone gross worldwide?

$476.7 million worldwide against a budget of about $18 million, a total beaten that year only by Ghost; Lost in New York, the first sequel, followed in 1992.

For how many years had the Grinch put up with Whoville's Christmas noise before he snapped?

53 years: 'For fifty-three years I've put up with it now!' the Grinch fumes in Dr. Seuss's 1957 book; Boris Karloff voiced him in the 1966 TV special.

How many sizes too small is the Grinch's heart?

It grows three sizes on Christmas morning when he hears the Whos singing anyway.

In what year did It's a Wonderful Life come out?

1946: Frank Capra's film premiered in New York on 20 December 1946, disappointed at the box office, then became a TV fixture after a clerical error let its copyright lapse in 1974.

How many Academy Award nominations did It's a Wonderful Life receive?

It won none, and lost money at the box office.

How many Oscars did Miracle on 34th Street win?

Edmund Gwenn won for playing Kris Kringle, plus two writing awards.

In what year was Elf released?

2003: Elf opened in November 2003 with Will Ferrell as Buddy, raised at the North Pole and sent to New York; Jon Favreau directed on a budget of about $33 million.

In what year was Die Hard, the eternal "is it a Christmas film" debate, released?

1988: Die Hard opened on 15 July 1988, with Bruce Willis's John McClane trapped in Nakatomi Plaza during a Christmas Eve party, and grossed about $140 million worldwide.

Roughly what was the budget of the 2004 motion-capture film The Polar Express?

$165-170 million: Robert Zemeckis's motion-capture film, with Tom Hanks in several roles including the conductor, was reported as the most expensive animated feature to date in 2004 and grossed about $286 million in its first run.

In what year was Silent Night first performed, in Oberndorf, Austria?

1818: Joseph Mohr's words, written two years earlier, were set by schoolteacher Franz Xaver Gruber and sung with guitar at St. Nicholas church in Oberndorf on Christmas Eve 1818.

In what year did John Freeman Young publish the standard English translation of Silent Night?

1859: Episcopal priest John Freeman Young published the English version sung in most churches, 'Silent night, holy night! All is calm, all is bright', in New York in 1859.

In what year was Jingle Bells published, under the title The One Horse Open Sleigh?

1857: James Lord Pierpont copyrighted 'The One Horse Open Sleigh' in Boston on 16 September 1857; a later printing retitled it 'Jingle Bells', and it may have been meant for Thanksgiving.

In what year did Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker premiere?

1892: The Nutcracker premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg on 18 December 1892, on a double bill with Tchaikovsky's opera Iolanta, to a lukewarm reception.

In what year did George Balanchine's Nutcracker premiere with New York City Ballet?

1954: George Balanchine's staging for New York City Ballet opened in February 1954 and made the full-length ballet an American Christmas fixture.

Roughly how many physical copies has Bing Crosby's White Christmas sold, making it the best-selling single ever?

50 million copies, the Guinness World Records estimate for Crosby's 1942 recording, which makes it the best-selling single of all time; all versions together top 100 million.

How many weeks did White Christmas top the Billboard chart on its 1942 release?

11 weeks: Crosby's recording from Holiday Inn topped Billboard's chart for eleven weeks in late 1942, and Irving Berlin's song won the Oscar for Best Original Song.

In what year did Mariah Carey release All I Want for Christmas Is You?

1994: Carey and Walter Afanasieff wrote the song for her album Merry Christmas, released in November 1994; it did not top the Hot 100 until 2019, a quarter century later.

In what year did the United States issue its first Christmas postage stamp?

1962: the US Post Office issued its first Christmas stamp, a wreath-and-candles design, in November 1962; Britain's Royal Mail followed with its first Christmas stamps in 1966.

How many copies of Sir Henry Cole's first commercial Christmas card were printed?

2,050 cards, printed in two batches from John Callcott Horsley's design of a family toasting the season, sold for a shilling each; Louis Prang began mass-producing cards in America in the 1870s.

In what year was Rome first recorded celebrating Christmas on December 25?

AD 336: the Chronograph of 354, a Roman calendar compiled for a wealthy Christian, records 25 December as the feast of Christ's birth in its list for that year, the earliest such record.

In what year did Christmas Day become a federal holiday in the United States?

1870: President Ulysses S. Grant signed the act making Christmas Day a federal holiday on 28 June 1870, alongside New Year's Day, Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

On which day of January do Orthodox churches using the Julian calendar celebrate Christmas?

January 7: on the Julian calendar, which lags the Gregorian by nearly two weeks through 2100, that date is 25 December; churches in Russia, Serbia and Georgia keep it.

How many girls did Saint Nicholas save from prostitution by tossing gold through their window?

He did it on three nights so their father could pay their dowries, the root of the gift-giving legend.

In what year does tradition say Saint Nicholas of Myra died?

343: tradition dates his death to the sixth of December 343 in Myra, in modern Turkey; his feast has been kept on that date ever since, and his relics were carried to Bari in 1087.

How many ingredients should a traditional Christmas pudding have, according to the popular myth?

13 ingredients, one for Christ and each of the twelve apostles, with the mix stirred east to west for the Magi, a piece of Stir-up Sunday folklore rather than any fixed recipe.

In what year did NORAD's Santa tracker begin, after a Sears advert misprinted a phone number?

1955: a Sears ad in Colorado Springs invited children to phone Santa, the calls reached Continental Air Defense Command's operations line, and Colonel Harry Shoup's staff began reporting Santa's position.

How many square kilometres is Christmas Island, the Australian territory in the Indian Ocean?

135 square kilometres: the island lies in the Indian Ocean about 350 km south of Java, is largely national park, and is famous for its annual red crab migration.

In what year was Christmas Island named, when an English captain passed it on Christmas Day?

1643: Captain William Mynors of the East India Company named the island when he sailed past on Christmas Day 1643; Britain transferred it to Australia in 1958.

In what year was The Elf on the Shelf book published?

2005: Carol Aebersold and her daughter Chanda Bell self-published The Elf on the Shelf in 2005, basing the scout elf on a tradition in their own Georgia family.

In what year did the Illustrated London News show Victoria and Albert's Christmas tree?

1848: the Illustrated London News printed an engraving of Victoria, Albert and their children around a decorated tree at Windsor in December 1848, and the German custom swept Britain and America.