• Christmas in December
    Was Jesus     born in December? Not sure. The Gospels speak of sheep in the fields at the Nativity , and in winter the sheep do not frolic in the meadows! Big blur also on the date. While it is common to hear that Jesus was born under Herod the Great, our calendar is not the point, 1 Herod died in the year 4 BC. As for the star of Bethlehem, an exceptional astrological phenomenon, this one was observed seven centuries before the supposed Nativity ...

  • A festival originally pagan
    The Romans were already celebrating the Saturnalia . A celebration that took place at the time of the winter solstice (end of December) to honor the return of light, the days lengthening from that moment. More interested in Easter , Christians only officialised Christmas in the 3rd century!

  • The invention of Santa Claus
    If St. Nicholas has existed since the Middle Ages, it was not until the 17th century that an English Father Christmas emerged. Thin, austere, he distributes spanking to unwashed children. In France, this father is all green. It was the Americans who invented a good-natured old man in 1900 who was immortalized by the Coca-Cola pubs. This ancestor restores the bond between the generations, Santa Claus is an initiatory rite. By revealing the secret , adults grow the child.

  • A European decoration
    Opposed to the crib, the German Protestants settled from the 16th century decorated tree and this is the 19th century Queen Victoria the matter to the court of England. The decorative balls from Alsace replace real apples which in 1858 have frozen!
    Finally since ancient times, were burned logs watered wine, against bad luck. In the face of the decline of the chimneys, an English pastry cook had the idea of ​​offering them as a cake . This tradition dates back only to 1945.

  • Turning numbers
    Christmas     in France is 5.8 million fir trees , 40,000 tons of chocolate , 2 million visitors to the Christmas market in Strasbourg (without a doubt the most beautiful and the one that retains an authenticity not only mercantile), 1,26 million letters and 171,170 mails to Santa Claus !
    (Source Cabinet Deloitte 2012)