Christmas Trees - the nerdy facts to bore guests with ...

Everyone’s familiar with the good old Christmas tree, but did you know that the needles of some trees are edible and offer great source of Vitamin C?

No?

We didn’t either and this got us digging around the net looking for other unusual little facts about them.

As a bit of fun, light reading we’ve got together a few of the more interesting less well-known facts for you below.

Christmas trees – some less well known facts?

1. An average Christmas tree will contain about 30,000 bugs and insects – have you got yours this year?!

2. The first known Christmas tree to be decorated was in Latvia in 1510.

3. Germany holds the first printed reference to the Christmas tree from a document printed in 1531.

4. In large plantations Christmas tree’s clean the air around them by removing dust and pollen from it.

5. Just one acre of Christmas trees will provide the equivalent oxygen to satisfy the daily intake of 18 people.

6. In the USA, Christmas trees are grown in all 50 states, including Hawaii and Alaska.

7. Franklin Pierce, the 14^th President of the United States, was the first President to erect a Christmas tree in the White House in 1856.

8. It is though that more than 330,000 real Christmas trees are now sold over the internet through ecommerce channels.

9. The idea of donning them with electric coloured lights was first dreamed up in 1882 by Thomas Edison’s assistant, Edward Johnson.

10. The use of evergreen tree’s to celebrate the winter season was practised before the birth of Christ.

11. Each year there are around 60 million grown in Europe alone.

12. The largest Christmas tree structure, in Brazil 2009, was decorated with 25,200 red hot fairy lights and 3,144 strobe lights – they had a real disco Christmas that year!

13. The first artificial trees were made by the German’s from goose feathers – presumably after a massive Christmas dinner!

14. Spiders and spiders webs are commonly found decorating trees in Polish households in line with tradition.

15. Since 1947 the people of Oslo in Norway have donated a Christmas tree to the city of Westminster as an expression of gratitude for Britain’s help in World War II.

Find out more about the do's and don't's of the Vitamin C thing at Yahoo Answers. Warning you do have to be careful here, it's not just a case of gathering a load of needles up off the carpet and chewing on them!

Click to view our range of Feel-Real Artificial Christmas Trees.

Sources:

http://www.itwillsoonbechristmas.com/christmastreefacts.htm

http://www.pickyourownchristmastree.org/facts.php

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-1/largest-christmas-tree-structure/

http://facts.randomhistory.com/christmas-facts.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/50-things-yule-never-know-653613