Everybody loves a festive fact and we’ve got them by the bucket load! Take a look at these facts and impress everyone at the Christmas quiz.
Presents
Christmas is the time for giving, so it’s not surprising that we spend lots over December. Here’s the breakdown…
The average shopper this year will spend £1,116 on Christmas, with £381.60 of that spent on gifts
We’ll buy 6 million rolls of sellotape to wrap our gifts in the run-up to Christmas
In the UK, 227,000 miles of wrapping paper is sold – enough to wrap the equator 9 times!
According to VoucherCodes, we’ll spend £32.26 billion Christmas shopping online this year
We spend around £5 billion on unwanted gifts each year
In ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, there are 364 presents, that would cost over £60,000 to buy
The average child's Christmas wishlist adds up to £294.58 worth of presents
When it comes to last-minute purchases, we usually spend a total of £33 each
Food
For many of us, food is the most important part of Christmas. Let’s take a look at the numbers behind our favourite festive treats:
An estimated 6.5 million jars of cranberry sauce are purchased in the UK over Christmas
The average family spends £159.50 on Christmas food and drink
A typical Christmas Dinner usually contains a whopping 956 calories - just for the main course!
Nearly 800 million mince pies are eaten in the UK over Christmas
Close to 9 million turkeys will be cooked on Christmas Day
Shockingly, 750 million individual sprouts are sold each Christmas
The most expensive Christmas Pudding in the world cost a whopping £23,500
But, each year we throw away 270,000 tonnes of food over the festive period alone. Remember to save that turkey for your sandwiches!
Christmas traditions
From tucking into a Christmas pudding to watching the Queen’s speech, we Brits love sticking to festive traditions.
Over 2.3 million people will attend Church on Christmas Day
The Queen's speech was first televised in 1957… which was watched by a grand total of 8.14 million viewers last year
The average age of a Christmas tree is 15 years old
25% of our Christmas shopping time will be spent queuing
The largest Christmas cracker was a record-breaking 207ft long and 4ft wide… and the first Christmas cracker was introduced as early as 1845 by a London sweet maker called Tom Smith
Santa would have to visit 822 homes per second to deliver all the world’s presents on Christmas Eve
The world’s tallest Christmas tree was a jaw-dropping 221ft and stood in a Seattle shopping mall in 1950
Films
Is there anything more festive than settling down to watch a Christmas film? Impress your friends with these A-list facts:
Disney’s 2009 animated version of A Christmas Carol cost £190 million to make, making it the priciest Christmas film ever made
Bad Santa featured the ‘f-word’ a grand total of 147 times! Not one for the kids, then…
Will Ferrell turned down a jaw-dropping $29 million to make a sequel to Elf
In the Nightmare Before Christmas, each character had to have a total of 24 different poses per second of the film
Before filming The Santa Clause, Tim Allen adopted Santa’s diet of milk and cookies to help him put on 45 pounds for his role
So, there you have our best festive facts. Think we missed any out? Let us know on Twitter!
Disclaimer: All information and links are correct at the time of publishing.
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