{"id":248704,"date":"2025-12-17T09:37:28","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T14:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/?p=248704"},"modified":"2025-12-17T09:41:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T14:41:27","slug":"how-much-do-you-really-know-about-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/how-much-do-you-really-know-about-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Do You REALLY Know About Christmas?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Think you\u2019re a Christmas expert? Don\u2019t jingle your bells just yet. These festive facts might surprise you, impress you, or make you question everything you thought you knew about the holidays.<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Fake trees win. <\/span>Since 1991, artificial Christmas trees have outsold real ones in the U.S. Today, over 80% of Americans go faux. The pine-scented candles industry thanks you.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">George Washington\u2019s vague eggnog recipe.<\/span> The Founding Father included plenty of\u00a0booze\u00a0but forgot to mention how many eggs to use. He helpfully noted:\u00a0<em>\u201cTaste frequently.\u201d<\/em> Maybe that\u2019s why he forgot to list the number of eggs needed?<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Dickens wrote fast and got roasted.<\/span>\u00a0\u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d was written in just six weeks. Mark Twain\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0impressed, calling it \u201cglittering frostwork.\u201d Mark needed George\u2019s eggnog recipe.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Toxic tinsel.<\/span> In the \u201960s and \u201970s, tinsel was made of lead foil (yikes). The FDA stepped in, and by the early \u201970s plastic tinsel became the safer, sparkly norm.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Christmas went interstellar.<\/span> In 1965, astronauts aboard Gemini 6A played \u201cJingle Bells\u201d from space while pretending\u00a0they\u2019d\u00a0spotted a UFO. NASA: festive\u00a0<em>and<\/em>\u00a0funny.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Japan + Christmas = KFC.<\/span> A popular Christmas Eve tradition in Japan is eating fried chicken from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Because nothing says \u201choliday magic\u201d like extra crispy.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Norway is the ultimate holiday neighbor.<\/span> Every year, Norway gifts the UK a massive Christmas tree, which proudly stands in London\u2019s Trafalgar Square.\u00a0That\u2019s\u00a0next-level\u00a0re-gifting.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Santa\u2019s reindeer are all girls.<\/span> Both male and female reindeer grow antlers\u2014but males shed theirs before winter. Since Santa\u2019s team still has antlers on Christmas Eve, the sleigh is officially powered by strong women.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Christmas was once illegal.<\/span> From 1659 to 1681, Puritans banned Christmas celebrations in America. It\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0become a national holiday until 1870. Puritans\u00a0weren\u2019t\u00a0a lot of\u00a0fun.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Santa cookies are relatively new.<\/span>\u00a0One of the first mentions of leaving cookies for Santa appeared in the 1870s. Before that, Santa\u00a0apparently worked\u00a0snack-free.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Mistletoe is NOT a snack.<\/span> Eating it is extremely dangerous due to a toxin called\u00a0phoratoxin.\u00a0Kiss\u00a0under it,\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0chew it.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">How the Grinch stole the box office.<\/span> In 2018,\u00a0<em>The Grinch<\/em>\u00a0dethroned\u00a0<em>Home Alone<\/em>\u00a0as the highest-grossing Christmas movie, earning\u00a0nearly $513 million. Die Hard\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0make the cut? And yes, it IS a Christmas movie!<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Trees take patience.<\/span> It can take anywhere from 4 to 15 years to grow a Christmas tree, with an average of 7 years. That\u2019s commitment\u2026 for something you\u2019ll toss by New Year\u2019s.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Home Alone isn\u2019t as real as it looks.<\/span> The iconic house is in Winnetka, Illinois, but most of the movie was filmed on sets built inside a high school gym and pool. Movie magic strikes again.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">The USPS goes into overdrive.<\/span> Between Thanksgiving and New Year\u2019s, about 15 billion pieces of mail and 800 million packages are delivered. Be nice to your mail carrier.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Santa breaks the laws of physics.<\/span> To deliver gifts worldwide, Santa\u2019s sleigh would need to travel six million miles per hour &#8211; fast enough for the reindeer to break the sound barrier. No wonder they\u2019re legends.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">Mariah reigns supreme.<\/span> According to <em>Billboard<\/em>, \u201cAll I Want for Christmas Is You\u201d is the #1 holiday song of all time. Resistance is futile.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">\u201cJingle Bells\u201d wasn\u2019t born Christmas-y.<\/span> The Christmas classic was originally written for Thanksgiving. Talk about a seasonal glow-up.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000\">The song that keeps on giving.<\/span> The \u201cTwelve Days of Christmas\u201d adds up to 364 presents\u2014one for every day of the year except Christmas. Someone call Santa\u2019s accountant.<br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #ffffff\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4><span style=\"color: #008000\"><strong>American Senior Communities wishes you and yours a safe and happy holiday season!<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Think you\u2019re a Christmas expert? Don\u2019t jingle your bells just yet. These festive facts might surprise you, impress you, or make you question everything you thought you knew about the holidays. Fake trees win. Since 1991, artificial Christmas trees have outsold real ones in the U.S. Today, over 80% of Americans go faux. The pine-scented [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":248705,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[554],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asc-news-events"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asccare.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}