The True Origins of Fruitcake, the First Store Santa and More Christmas Facts You Maybe Didn’t Know

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen … but do you know the origins of eggnog? From “Silent Night”? From Santa himself?

Brian Earl has. The resident of Silicon Valley hosted the popular Christmas past podcast since 2018, telling delicious stories about the meanings of Christmas traditions to audiences around the world.

In 2022, Earl released a self-titled book expanding on all the bite-sized stories shared on his podcast. Here are five fun Christmas facts culled from the book.

1. Fruit cake dates back to the time of the Romans

IN last christmas, Earl talks about the origins of the love-it-or-hate-it holiday treat, explaining that it was first conceived as almost an “energy bar” for Roman soldiers heading into battle, consisting of barley porridge, pomegranate seeds, raisins and pine nuts, shaped into cakes.

2. The first store Santa Claus appeared in 1890

Although many might associate Santa in the store with Macy’s and Miracle on 34th Street, it was James Edgar, owner of Edgar’s Department Store in Brockton, Massachusetts, who “began appearing in his store dressed as Santa beginning in 1890,” Earl writes.

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3. Christmas trees were lit with candles — with dangerous consequences

Earl devotes a chapter to Christmas lights, recounting how people would light the tree with candles — a tradition credited to Martin Luther but actually started nearly a century after his death, closer to the 1600s.

Earl cites 1896 Good housekeeping article instructing readers to “have at hand a bucket of water and a sponge attached to a stick long enough to reach the top of the tree, to extinguish any flames that may arise.”

In fact, Christmas tree fires were so common that some insurance companies refused to cover them.

But by the early 1880s, Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb slowly changed the way people lit their trees, for the better.

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4. The gift wrap was created by accident

In 1917, two brothers who ran a paper store in Kansas City ran out of tissue paper used for gift wrapping. Looking for a quick replacement, one brother grabbed some of the “brightly colored sheets of paper imported from France that they planned to use as linings for their envelopes,” Earl writes. “He priced the sheets at 10 cents a piece, and the stuff just flew off the shelves.”

5. The snow globe was born by accident in Austria

Earl traces the history of the snow globe back to Austrian Erwin Perzy, who created and sold surgical instruments. Trying to make a better light bulb for operating rooms, Perzy crushed the glass into a “fine shimmer,” Earl writes, “creating thousands and thousands of tiny reflectors” in a water-filled globe made to amplify the light.

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For fun, he put some semolina in a ball of water and noticed that it looked like snow. In the end, he gave a friend one of these water glass globes with semolina and a small church that he had carved by hand, and thus the snow globe was created.

The modern Perzy family now runs the Original Viennese Snowglobe company — and the process used to make their snow is a closely guarded family secret.

“There are some tricks you need to use,” Edwin Perzy III told Earl. “I have a special machine for making snow, and that machine is not in my factory. It is in my private house.”

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Source: HIS Education