Although Christmas is a holiday celebrated by millions around the world, many people know very little about it. This is obvious when people get on radio talk shows complaining about the “modern” habit of referring to Christmas as Xmas. “Down with Xmas, put the Christ back in Christmas” has become the battle cry for some Christians protesting the increasing secularisation of Christmas. In truth, the term Xmas is anything but modern. If you want to blame someone for Xmas you’d better look to the ancient Greeks. X and Xt are both Greek symbols that mean Christ. Written references to a version of Xmas appear in the 1021 Anglo Saxon Chronicles. Below are a few other things you may not know Christmas and its folklore:

Countless children write a letter to Santa Claus in the North Pole each Christmas and on Christmas Eve, leave him cookies and milk and a carrot for Rudolph. It might seem as though we have been celebrating Christmas the same way for centuries, but the reality is that Santa didn’t start living at the North Pole until just after the American Civil War, and Rudolph didn’t appear until 1939. Santa must use a lot of magic to maintain his residence and workshop at the North Pole, because the geographic North Pole is located in the middle of the Arctic Ocean amid waters that are almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice. The nearest permanent land mass is an island off Greenland. There is however, a town in Alaska called North Pole. It is a suburb of Fairbanks and has the zip code 99705.

Santa Claus is thought to be based on St Nicholas, who was born in the third century in Greece. He was known for leaving people little gifts such as coins in shoes. Legend has it that pirates or sailors removed part of his remains from his grave in Turkey in 1087 and took them to their home in Bari, Italy. A grave was found on the Turkish island of Gemile, which sits east of Rhodes, in 1993. Historians believe it’s the original tomb of Saint Nicholas. On 28 December 2009, the Turkish Government announced its intent to formally request that St Nicholas’s skeletal remains be returned to Turkey. Authorities there asserted that St Nicholas desired to be buried in his town of birth, and that his remains were illegally removed from his homeland. The effort was unsuccessful.

Norwegian scientists have hypothesised that Rudolph’s red nose is probably the result of a parasitic infection of his respiratory system. Apparently, reindeer, despite their freezing environment, are prone to parasitic bug and worm infestations. Rudolph was also most likely a she, not a he. Although most of Santa’s reindeer have male sounding names like Comet and Cupid, male reindeer shed their antlers around Christmas while the females don’t.

The poem ‘The Night Before Christmas’, also known as ‘A Visit From St Nicholas’, was written by Clement Moore in 1822 and gave rise to many of our modern concepts of Santa Claus. However, the writer never intended for it to be published. He was a classics professor who wrote the poem for his children. His version of Santa was apparently inspired by a chubby Dutch driver who took his family on a sleigh ride. A friend sent the poem to the Sentinel newspaper, where it was published anonymously. The writer felt the poem was beneath his talents, and when it was published and became a huge hit, he denied writing it for nearly 15 years. It was eventually included in an anthology of his work thanks to the urging of his children.