Santa Clause: The Mystery Behind The Man
Santa Clause is well-known in most cultures. Almost everyone knows that he lives in the North Pole and brings presents to kids. In order to pay our due respect to Santa and try to help everyone get to know him a little bit better, we’ve put together some fun facts about this mysterious man that you can share with your kids this holiday season.
– Santa Clause goes by many names. In Belgium he is called Pere Noel, in the United Kingdom he is called Father Christmas and in Turkey is goes by Noel Baba.
– Supposedly Santa was born in 270 AD.
– On Christmas Eve Santa visits more than 90 million homes. In order to make it to all of them, his sleigh travels 671 million miles per hour.
-Because of time zone differences throughout each country, Santa has about 31 hours to deliver all of his presents.
– Despite the fact that all of Santa’s reindeers have masculine names, they are actually females. Male reindeers shed their antlers right before the holiday season.
– Santa’s outfit sometimes changes depending on what country he’s in. For instance, in Europe he has been seen wearing a green robe and a bishop hat.
– Many kids leave Santa milk and cookies on Christmas Eve. However, he does like mince pies that are left by children in Australia, rice porridge from children in Sweden or Christmas pudding from children in Ireland.
– Around 50% of the world celebrates Christmas in some fashion which means that Santa has a lot of followers!
– Santa was single until about the end of the 19th century. The first time that anyone heard of him having a spouse was in a story called A Christmas Legend, written by James Rees in 1849.
– It really is impossible for Santa to be everywhere at one time. In order for him to make appearances at places like shopping malls or Christmas parties, approximately 20,000 different people dress up in a Santa suite each holiday season to help Santa out.
– Despite Santa’s popularity over the centuries, Christmas did not become an official holiday in the United Stated until 1870.
If you run into Santa Clause this holiday season, why don’t you share some of these fun facts with him? Not only will you impress this jolly man, but he may just put you on his nice list!
