It's here, the day everyone has been waiting for. Young, old, man or woman, most people wake up with the anticipation of opening presents left under the tree or by the fireplace from Santa.
Every family has its own Christmas traditions, but here are some interesting facts you might not know about this day.
1. According to the Guinness World Records, the tallest cut Christmas tree was a 221-foot Douglas fir displayed in 1950 at the Northgate Shopping Center in Seattle, Washington.
2. According to Facebook data analyzed by David McCandless, author and data journalist, two weeks before Christmas is one of the two most popular times for couples to break up. However, Christmas Day is the least favorite day for breakups. McCandless presented this at a TED lecture series in Oxford, England, in 2010.
3. According to Holidays.net, Christmas stockings allegedly evolved from three sisters who were too poor to afford a marriage dowry and were doomed to a life of prostitution. However, they were saved when the wealthy bishop St. Nicholas of Smyrna (the precursor to Santa Claus) crept down their chimney and generously filled their stockings with gold coins.
4. In 1889, the first Christmas tree in the White House was placed in the Yellow Oval Room by the Benjamin Harrison administration, according to whitehousehistory.org.
5. Christmas was declared a federal holiday in 1870, according to timeanddate.com.
6. President Teddy Roosevelt, an environmentalist, banned Christmas trees from the White House in 1901, according to whitehousehistory.org. However, his son Archie smuggled a small tree inside and hid it in a closet in the upstairs sewing room.
7. According to environment.about.com, mistletoe combines the two Anglo-Saxon words "mistal," meaning dung and "tan," which means "twig," so mistletoe translates to "dung on a twig."
8. The Eisenhower administration held the record of 26 Christmas trees in the White House until the Clinton administration topped it with 36 trees in 1997, according to whitehousehistory.com.
9. According to bbcamerica.com, the British wear paper crowns on Christmas. The crowns are stored in a tube called a Christmas cracker.
10. The most expensively decorated Christmas tree was valued at $11,026,900 and was displayed by the Emirates Palace in Abu, Dhabi, in 2010, according to Guinness World Records.
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