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- In Roman times, holiday gift giving was popular during Saturnalia, a winter solstice celebration.
- The inventor of the Christmas "cracker" or bon-bon was Tom Smith who owned a sweet shop in London.
- The world's first singing Christmas commercial aired on the radio on Christmas Eve, 1926 for Wheaties cereal.
- If you received all of the gifts in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas", you would receive 364 presents.
- In 1947, Toys for Tots organized its first Christmas toy drive for needy youngsters.
- "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" by Gene Autry (1949) sold 2 million copies of the song in it's first year.
- 1700s Europeans baked fruitcakes at the end of the harvest, then ate them at the beginning of the next year's harvest for good luck.
- The 2009 White House Blue Room Christmas Tree is an 18 1/2-by-13-foot Douglas fir.
- Christmas cookies for Santa began during the Great Depression to inspire children to share with others in hard times.
- More than 330,000 real Christmas trees are sold via e-commerce or catalogs.
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