Christmas | Crazy, Weird And Funny Place

Posts Tagged ‘christmas’

Five facts you didnt know about Christmas cards

Posted by skywalkeer on December 23rd, 2008

Christmas is just around the corner and many people are sending Christmas cards to their friends and family to show that they are thinking about them. Here are five facts you probably didn´t know about Christmas cards:

1. Did you know that Christmas cards are an English innovation? The first Christmas card was commissioned by Henry Cole (civil servant with a great interest in art and design) in 1843. It was only printed in 1000 copies and very few are known to remain in existence today. They are very valuable today and one example was sold in December 2005 for £8,500 ($12,500).

2. Did you know that it was President Eisenhower who issued the first official White House Christmas card back in 1953? Back in 1961, the White House was sending out 2,000 Christmas Cards. Today that number has risen to over 1.4 million cards.

3. Did you know that for every 3 holiday cards purchased and sent, one has a religious message?

4. Did you know that Christmas cards are by far the most popular of all the seasonal cards? Over 60% of greeting card sales annually can be attributed to the holiday season.

# Christmas 61%
# Valentine’s Day 25%
# Mother’s Day 4%
# Easter 3%
# Father’s Day 2.5%
# Other 4.5%

5. Did you know that ”Merry Christmas” is the greeting preferred by 53% of Americans? “Happy Holidays” is preferred by 21% and only 12% like “Season’s Greetings”.

Posted in Interesting Stories

Tags: christmas, christmas cards, happy holidays, merry christmas

No Comments »

School Desks put to Good Use

Posted by skywalkeer on December 5th, 2008

In what would undoubtedly be the best use of school desks, a school handyman has carved a complete Nativity scene from the old classroom desks. Before you start thinking whether the scene is just engraved or drawn on the desks I would like to inform you that it has 3ft tall figures of each character.

Mr. Chris Reeves, the school handyman, laminated the desks together and carved out the figures using a jigsaw. It took him two months to carve out all the characters in the Christmas story and on average each figure was carved from two desks each. Mr. Reeves who is now 54 years old was taught basic carpentry years ago but had never done something like this before.

He says that he remembered that there were some 1960´s teak desks lying around after the school refurbished the science department. He felt that the wood was too good to waste and hence decided to put them to some good use. The figures will now be displayed in the school foyer at Nicholas Breakspear School in St Albans, Hertfordshire.

Head of the religious education department, Ella McCarthy says the scene is absolutely amazing and she had never seen something like this before. She is of the opinion that Mr. Reeves is really gifted and did a remarkable job by using the old desks. Her pupils love the scene.