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Christmas In History In December 1989, the people of Eastern Europe were free to celebrate Christmas openly for the first time in decades. Church masses were broadcasted live for the first time in history.
Christmas Decorations were originally home-made paper flowers, apples, biscuits and sweets. The earliest commercial decorations were from Germany. Nuremburg was famous for making toys while Lauscha, for its glass ornaments. In 1880, F.W. Woolworth visited Lauscha from America and bought a few glass Christmas tree ornaments - they were sold out within a day! The same thing happened the following year and so he bought 200,000 Lauscha ornaments in the third year. During the First World War, supplies of ornaments from Lauscha ceased and the Americans began producing their own. They developed new techniques that allowed mass production, creating as many ornaments in a minute as could be made in a day in Lauscha.
Santa's Reindeers are named Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen.
Silent Night was composed by an Austrian priest in 1818. Joseph Mohr was told the day before Christmas that the church organ was broken and would not be prepared in time for Christmas Eve. He could not image a Christmas without music so he began to wrote a carol that could be sung by choir to guitar music. That night, the people in the little Austrian church sang "Stille Nacht" for the first time.
Boxing Day falls on December 26 and was traditionally known as St Stephen's Day. It became known as "Boxing Day" because money was collected in alms boxes placed in church during the festive season for the poor and needy.
The First Charity Christmas Card was produced by UNICEF in 1949. The picture on the card was painted by a 7 year old girl, Jitka Samova of Rudolfo - a small town in the former Czechoslovakia. The town had received UNICEF assistance after World War II, inspiring Jitka to paint children dancing around a maypole as "joy going round and round".
The Modern Christmas Wreath displayed on the front door during Christmas is a tradition borrowed from ancient Rome's New Year celebrations. The Romans wished each other "good health" by exchanging branches of evergreens which was called "strenae" after Strenia, the Goddest of Health. It became a custom to bend these gifts into rings and have them displayed on doorways.
The Poinsettia was originally grown in Mexico, where it was known as the "Flower of the Holy Night" (i.e. Holy Night being Christmas Eve), before it was adopted by Americans as their traditional Christmas flower. It was brought to America by Joel Poinsett in 1829.
Displaying Christmas Lights is a tradition which went back to when Christians were persecuted for saying Mass. A simple candle in the window signalled that Mass would be celebrated there that night.
Tinsel On The Christmas Tree is attributed to a widow who was left to bring up a large family of children by herself. She was determined to make Christmas a happy one for her children although life was hard on her, and prepared a Christmas tree to surprise them. The spiders that came out to see the Christmas tree that night, unwittingly weaved webs all over the tree as they crawled from one branch to the other. Legend has it that the little Christ child didn't want to disappoint the poor mother and so he touched the spider webs, changing them into sparkling and shimmering silver and gold.
Christmas Presents are a beautiful tradition that began with the Three Wise Men bringing their gifts to Jesus. However, no one was really in a habit of exchanging elaborate gifts until the 1800s. The commercialization of Santa Claus and the amazing retailling phenomenon that followed, made gift-giving a central focus of the Christmas season.
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