Interesting Facts

If you think you have a frustrating job, think again: A Tesco supermarket in Wrexham, North Wales, is advertising for a Christmas Lights Untangler. Christmas is coming! (The idea is that people will bring in any troublesome lights to have them unravelled.  The successful applicant, who must be passionate about Christmas, will be trained to unravel 3 metres of Christmas lights in 3 minutes, for £ 6.70 an hour. I hope people will tip him or her, that's barely enough to buy a cup of coffee in the UK.)

Turku is the official Christmas City of Finland. (The Declaration of Christmas Peace has been taking place there every year, almost uninterrupted since the Middle Ages (records show it was cancelled in 1939 during the Winter War). The declaration takes place at 12 noon in the Old Great Square of Turku, on the day of Christmas Eve. The declaration ceremony begins with the hymn Jumala ompi linnamme (Martin Luther's Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott) and continues with the Declaration of Christmas Peace read from a parchment roll in Finnish and Swedish.  It is broadcast on TV and radio, and of course nowadays the internet.  The old laws guarantee everyone Christmas peace from Christmas Eve until the end of Christmastide on St Knut's Day. I wonder if we could extend that.)

What price friendship? Well £6,800 actually. (According to a survey by the Post Office UK adults have spent on average £158 on gifts for their closest friend in the last year. Around £62 is spent on Christmas presents and £47 on birthday gifts, which over a lifetime adds up to £6,800, and one in seven people will fork out more than £100 on a friend’s Christmas present. When a best friend has children, the costs become even higher, adding an additional £53 annually. The survey doesn't mention regifting. (Giving a present you've received to someone else. I always give people permission to do this.) ) 

Sorry to start wittering on about Christmas before Halloween is even over, but according to Sainsbury’s, British strawberries will be on supermarket shelves in December. (Thanks to  researchers who have been able to grow strawberries in mid-winter using a combination of blue and red LED lighting, we will be able to have strawberries with our Christmas puds. I'll bet they're not as tasty as sun-ripened ones. I'll wait until Wimbledon thanks.)

According to a survey conducted by Sky Rainforest Rescue, 9 out of 10 Brits are unable to identify 5 common trees. Most were able to name 5 trees, but they couldn't recognise them when shown a picture. (The survey found that many adults couldn't tell a maple tree from an oak or a fir, and nine out of ten people struggled to identify the pointed leaves and red berries of a holly tree. Many didn't even know where conkers come from, or that acorns grow on oaks. Horse chestnut, maple oak tree? Never heard of them. And the worst of all the fir tree, traditionally put up in our homes for Christmas, caused confusion with more than 1 in 10 unable to name a picture of one. I guess it was unrecognisable without its clothes on. )

A record-breaking stollen that weighed in at over 4,000 kilograms was created to celebrate the opening of Dresden's Christmas market. (If you want to make your own you will need approximately:-Stollen (rounded figures): 1,500 kilos flour 990 kilos seedless raisins (sultanas) 790 kilos butter 455 kilos sugar 200 kilos candied lemon peel 150 kilos almonds (sweet) 110 kilos icing sugar 95 kilos yeast 55 kilos almonds (bitter) 45 kilos lemon peels 44 kilos Jamaica rum 44 kilos powdered milk 30 kilos salt 5 kilos spices) Source

According to figures released by the Circle Housing organisation, about 7 million people in the UK are expected to take out a loan to cover the crippling cost of Christmas. (It gets worse; according to the Money Advice Service, one million Brits will use a payday loan to cover the cost of Christmas while a third of adults will use credit cards.  Two of the most expensive ways of borrowing money. In 2012 Brits spent an average of £1,000 per household on Christmas and some of them haven't paid that back yet. The harsh reality is, if you can't afford to buy something without paying with credit, don't buy it.  If you are feeling pressured into buying presents you can't afford, be honest and tell people, including your children, you simply can't afford it. They will be more understanding than you think, and you can offer to start a fund to buy their "must have" item later when you have enough to buy it with hard cash.  If you have to have something to wrap...

Ladbrokes is offering odds of 2,000:1 for a zombie apocalypse to happen on Christmas Day. (This means that they think a zombie apocalypse is more likely than Crystal Palace winning the Barclays Premier League this season (5,000:1). Poor old Crystal Palace.)

Today is LEON day. Does this mean it's the Learn English Online Network day?  No, unfortunately not, it's simply Noel spelt backwards, because there are exactly 6 months to go till Christmas.  

In France, from July 1, a new law will require shops and offices in France to turn off their lights one hour after the last worker leaves a building.   ( Shop windows may only be lit from 7 a.m. or an hour before opening time, and  shop window displays must be turned off at 1 a.m.   Exceptions will be made during Christmas and other significant events, as well as in some tourist and cultural areas. I wonder what they will do with the Eiffel tower.) Source

Berlin waste management company BSR, collects around 400,000 Christmas trees each year. (At this time of year in Germany people throw out their old Christmas trees for collection.  Many are shredded, recycled as wood chips and finally used in the production of wooden pellets for central heating systems. Some cities in Germany burn discarded Christmas trees to generate heat and electricity. In some areas, up to the 25th of January, the council lets you know when to put your tree out for collection, but in most areas, one person will put a tree on a street corner, and then the next day there will be 20 to 30 of them there.)

In the UK, white Christmases were more frequent in the 18th and 19th centuries (During the 20th Century, there were only 4 White Christmases in the UK, and so far this century, we've had two - 2010 and 2009. Yes, in spite of all those snow covered cards featuring snowmen and robins, and films where everyone rushes out to find it's snowing, we don't get much snow in England.  The sad truth is the most likely weather event on Christmas Day in the UK is rain.)

According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds the two icons of the Christmas song,  the 12 days of  Christmas ;  the grey partridge and the turtle dove, are in alarming decline.  (The society says the number of partridges has dropped 30 percent. Turtle doves are even worse off — with a 60 percent decline in numbers. The society warns, at this rate, the dove will face extinction by the middle of the next decade. No partridge in a pear tree.) The 12 days of Christmas

At Christmas ever popular on Santa's wish list are electronic gadgets. Even for children. According to a survey conducted by the Gadget Show live, the first gadget a child gets is probably a games console, by the age of seven years and seven months. (The last they receive is likely to be a mobile – with which they will be texting their friends by the time they are nine years and three months. In between, they will get their first digital camera at eight years six months, a TV in their bedroom two months later and an MP3 player at eight years and nine months. They’ll flip open their first laptop at eight years and ten months. At an even younger age we give them toy replicas of these gadgets, even working examples, aimed at children.  The future is going to be very interesting as our digital age generation comes of age.)

The world’s most expensive Christmas dinner will set you back £125,000. (So what do you get for 1/8 of a million quid? The meal, which will be prepared by John Salt head chef Ben Spalding at the home of the customer, is for four people has the following:- Starter - Almas caviar (£5,000)  served with a balsamic vinegar that is 150 years old. Main course - Wagyu beef fillet and heart (£5,000) sprinkled with Akbari Pistachios (£5,000) and edible 50 carat gold leaf. Pud - Whipped Kopi Luwak (£3,000) and Densuke watermelon (£2,600). All washed down with £37,000 pre-World War One champagne, poured into diamond studded champagne flutes. Luxury website VeryFirstTo.com are offering the meal, but the proceeds will go to charity.  Well that's all right then.  You can stuff your face silly, as long as it's for a good cause.  Let them eat Wagyu Beef.) Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually .

According to developer Rovio, their popular game, Angry Birds, was downloaded 6.5 million times on Christmas Day 2011. (This is over three times the two million downloads Rovio managed over Christmas 2010. It's my favourite game, but it makes you wonder. Is there any device left that doesn't have Angry Birds on it?)

According to the annual Christmas Price Index compiled by PNC Wealth Management, if you were to buy every item mentioned in "The Twelve Days of Christmas," you would have to fork out nearly $100,000. (Trying to buy the 364 items repeated in all the song's verses — from 12 drummers drumming to a partridge in a pear tree — would cost $96,824, an increase of 10.8 percent over 2009.  That's inflation for you.)

According to Google the top 12 toys for Christmas 2010 are: City Airport, Lego UK Fireman Sam Deluxe Fire Station Playerset Fur real Go Go Walking Pup, Hasbro Jet Pack Buzz Lightyear, Mattel UK Kidizoom VideoCam, VTech Monopoly Revolution, Hasbro Moon Dough Barn, Spinmaster Toys UK Nerf N Strike Stampede ECS, Hasbro Paper Jamz Guitar, Wow Wee Europe Pumpaloons, Drumond Park Sylvanian Families Caravan, Flair Zhu Zhu Grooming Salon, Character Options This was like reading gobbledygook to me.  What on earth are Pumpaloons?!)

Truffle producers in France claim that one in three of all the truffles sold in France is stolen. (The problem is the high price some daft people are willing to pay for this highly-prized delicacy; between €800 (£680) and €1,000 a kilo. A crime wave of truffle rustling, the armed theft of cash from truffle traders, the theft of "truffle trees", and even the rustling of champion truffle-sniffing dogs, has now cost one man his life, as a young farmer in the Rhône valley has been arrested on possible murder charges after shooting dead a man whom he suspected of raiding his "truffle groves" in the middle of the night. The victim was carrying only a truffle-digging trowel. So, truffles are off the menu (not that they were ever on it) in our house this Christmas. I'll stick to the chocolate variety.)

According to the PNC Financial Services "The Christmas Price Index", buying all the presents in "The 12 Days of Christmas" song will cost nearly 400 dollars more than last year. (The reason is the price of gold rings and French hens are up sharply. The total price tag would be $21,465.56 this year.)