You’re running with your kids, from store to store, trying madly to finish your Christmas shopping. You know it’s only a matter of time before your children’s patience runs out and they start to collapse. They are tired of the Christmas CD that you have been playing in the car and the games that you have brought have run their course. He has three more malls to visit today, and his biggest fear is trying to shop with bored kids.

Here’s one way to keep them entertained: dazzle them with your knowledge of weird little Christmas facts.

For example: when you hear the Gene Autry classic “Here Comes Santa Claus” – for the fiftieth time, today – ask your children if they would like to visit the real Santa Claus Lane one day. That will get you thinking, at least for a minute. Although they may be disappointed in the lack of snow and ice, if they visit Santa Claus Lane. See, every year since the 1930s, Hollywood Boulevard has been officially renamed Santa Claus Lane, during the annual Hollywood Christmas Parade.

More semi-useless, but attention-grabbing facts:

What is the most popular Christmas song of all time? Bing Crosby’s version of “White Christmas”. And “Silent Night,” possibly the most recognizable Christmas hymn, was written in 1818 by an Austrian pastor, Joseph Mohr. When Christmas Eve rolled around that year, the organ in his church broke, so together with his friend, Franz Gruber, he wrote this new tune for that night’s service and played it on his guitar for his congregation. And “Jingle Bells” was originally written for a Thanksgiving celebration in 1857.

As important as Christmas is to us, today, it has only been in the last 150 years or so that the day has been an official holiday in the United States. Thanksgiving was a far more important secular holiday for early Americans. In fact, Alabama was the first US state to officially recognize Christmas as a holiday in 1836, and it wasn’t until 1905 that Oklahoma officially recognized Christmas.

Electric Christmas tree lights were first invented by The Edison Company in 1882. Until then, if trees were lit, candles were used, and then usually only on Christmas Eve night.

Some think that the abbreviation for Christmas, Xmas, is sacrilegious, but in fact the first letter of the Greek word for Christ is chi, which is X. Before the invention of the printing press, “Xmas” was often used in print. . , to save time and ink.

We have our custom of hanging the stockings from the Dutch mantle, although their custom is to leave wooden shoes by the fireplace, they fill the shoes with fruits for the donkey that Saint Nicholas uses to carry his gifts for the children.

Do you see how easy it is? Keep tossing these little tidbits one by one. Either your kids will marvel at your brilliance or they will fall asleep in the car. Either way, they are busy. And you’re almost done; Christmas is almost here. Keep talking.