Rock any Christmas dinner with these 11 fun facts about Christmas carols

Everyone knows them, everyone loves them.

Um… yes. haha. Be quiet! I have to write this article now.

So. Where were we? Oh yeah, EVERYBODY she loves the Christmas carols. Mariah Carey, Wham!, Bing Crosby – classics that have sweetened the holidays for decades.

And because they ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE loves you so much, everyone will love you too, if you interrupt a boring conversation a bit with the following 11 fun facts fugo to lend. Feliz Navidad!

“Jingle Bells” is not a Christmas carol. It was written by American James Lord Pierpont in 1857 for Thanksgiving.

Incidentally, “Jingle Bells” is also the first song ever performed in space. In 1965, astronauts Walter Schirra Jr. and Thomas Stafford the song aboard the Gemini 6 spacecraft.

In April 1975, the song “White Christmas” was played by the US military over its internal radio channel in Saigon, Vietnam, to signal soldiers to leave the city. 1000 Americans and 6000 Vietnamese were evacuated in this way.

By the way, «White Christmas» was written in 1940 by the Jewish songwriter Irving Berlin.

In 1957 Elvis Presley covered the song and called it “Blue Christmas”. Berlin disliked the cover version so much that he launched a campaign to stop radio stations from playing the track. Failed. Elvis’ cover topped the charts.

One last fact about “White Christmas”: According to the Guinness Book of Records, versions sung by Bing Crosby have sold 50 million copies. This makes the song the best-selling single of all time.

The shortest Christmas carol in the world lasts five seconds and comes from the band “Acappella Yuletide Uproar”. Appropriately, it’s called “The World’s Shortest Christmas Song”.

If you have enough time, you can:

The first Christmas carol to mention Santa Claus was “Up On The Housetop” by Benjamin Hanby. It was written in 1864.

“Let It Snow” is one of the most famous Christmas carols in the world. The word “Christmas” does not come up once.

Mel Tormé wrote “The Christmas Song” during a heat wave in the summer of 1944.

“Feliz Navidad” is a very simple Christmas song. It consists of 21 “Feliz Navidad”, 16 “I want to wish you a Merry Christmas” and two other lines.

It was composed in 1970 by the Puerto Rican José Feliciano. Fun fact within the fun fact: Feliciano was born blind.

According to his own statements, he composed the song in just five minutes.

The oldest Christmas carol dates back to the 14th century. “Be welcome, Herre Christ” goes back to a fragment from the 14th century. However, this is not entirely certain. The poet Hoffmann von Fallersleben dates the origin as far back as the 11th century.

The oldest written version of this song is in the University Library of Erfurt. The manuscript is part of a 100-page Latin treatise on logic. At the end of the treatise, the song with text and four staves was noted by a chaplain from Aachen.

The reason for this bizarre mix – logical writing and Christmas carols – would be the high price of writing material. Back then, unused pages in a book were a no-go and filled up elsewhere.

Mariah Carey’s song “All I Want For Christmas Is You” was written by songwriter Walter Afanasieff. The same Afanasieff also wrote Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”.

(dfr)