By With Father Christmas soon on the way and snow likely to delay us all to work, here are a handful of fascinating alternative facts about the Christmas season:
1 Rudolf is probably a diseased reindeer
Although the children of the (western) world believe that Rudolf has a red nose because he is a pretty special boy, the fact is that Rudolf’s nose, if anything, is probably the result of a disease named Rosacea.
Affecting more than 16 million people in the United States, the disease causes redness in the face. As the disease worsens, the skin of the nose may become bulbous and shiny red from excess tissue; something that particularly affects men in the North Pole too.
Perhaps the other reindeer were snubbing him for fear of catching the disease (although actually it isn’t contagious!)
2 Christmas is a time for giving… and ditching your other half
According to a recent Facebook survey, the two weeks leading up to Christmas are the most common time for people to break up throughout the year.
Though thankfully for some however, Christmas day is the day that according to Facebook, people are the least likely to break up, which is nice.
Mondays were also found to be pretty bad, so be careful on Mondays!
3 Saint Nicholas is a pretty busy boy
We all know and love Saint Nicholas (Father Christmas/Santa/Dad) as the jolly round-bellied man who falls down your chimney every Christmas.
Saint Nicholas, however, also does a lot of other things, as he is in fact the most celebrated non-biblical Saint in the world and has been portrayed more than any other with the exception of Mary.
Besides being the saint of Smyrna, he is also the patron saint of pawn-broking, piracy (at sea), thievery and butchery. Oh, and New York City.
And we thought he was only busy in December!
4 It’s nicer to be vegetarian at Christmas
If you happen to be a turkey (which you’re probably not), Christmas must seem like an annual genocide, as over 10 million turkeys are dispatched in the weeks before Christmas (out of 15 million who meet their end for food each year). The typical factory-farmed turkey lives between 9 and 24 weeks and usually has to exist in close proximity to 25,000 other turkeys.
Instead of buying turkey at supermarkets therefore, more and more people are turning to local farm shops, where they know their meat has been bred cruelty-free.
5 Father Christmas is a salsa dip
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), there are over 2,000 million children under the age of 18 in the world.
If we take an average of 2.5 children per household, Father Christmas would have to make approximately 842 million stops on Christmas Eve. He would therefore have to travel a distance of 221 miles to reach these stops and would have to travel between each house in 2/10,000 second – meaning that the jolly old fat man would have to accelerate 12.19 million miles per second between each stop!
According to UNICEF, this would reduce Father Christmas to “chunky salsa,” which isn’t very nice. Especially when you take into account his poor diseased lead reindeer.