Christmas facts | Turkeys eaten | Origins of Christmas

We’ve looked at Christmas traditions from around the world but do you know how many turkeys we get through at this time of year or where mulled wine originally came from? Here’s our top Christmas facts that are perfect to cite around the dinner table when your Dad is reading the awful Christmas cracker jokes. Before the turkey became the UK's traditional Christmas meal, the usual meat was swan, goose, peacock or boar.

The British Turkey Information Service reckons that last Christmas the UK consumed 10 million turkeys, along with 25 million Christmas puddings, 250 million pints of beer and 35 million bottles of wine. It’s considered unlucky to cut a mince pie with a knife. During Oliver Cromwell’s reign, it was rumoured that if you ate a mince pie on Christmas day you would get arrested. Festive treats were reportedly banned as part of efforts to tackle gluttony, but the ruling didn’t survive when Charles II became King. George I of England ate his first Christmas pudding in 1714. It contained five pounds of suet and one pound of plums.

Mulled wine can be

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traced back to Roman times, but it wasn’t until the 14th century that the mix of wine, fruit and spices gained its name from the Old English word meaning “muddled”. Charles Dickens gave mulled wine its traditional festive status when he mentioned it in the beloved classic, “A Christmas Carol”, first published in 1843. The typical number of calories in your average Christmas dinner is a 957 (not sure how accurate that is, do they know that we get through 120,000 tonnes of potatoes?) The Germans made the first artificial Christmas trees out of dyed goose feathers. christmas-tree-fish-982742

The holiday Boxing day was originally celebrated in England,for the servants. After Christmas,the servants “boxed up” all the left-overs from the rich people and brought them home. 8 Million - The number of natural Christmas trees consumed by the UK each year. 822 - The number of houses Santa would need to visit every second if he were to make all his deliveries. Know any Christmas facts that you want to share? Let us know in the comments below or over on @canteentweets