“A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which debuted on CBS in 1965, was the first animated TV special starring the Peanuts characters created by cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. Although TV executives thought it would be a failure, the animated Christmas special won an Emmy award and a Peabody award, captured 50% of the TV viewers on its debut night, and is still popular today. Here’s some trivia you may not know about the special.

- The number of hairs on Charlie Brown’s head changes throughout the show. In some scenes, he has three hairs on the back of his head, and in others he has no hair at all.

- Composer Vince Guaraldi was invited to write the music for the special after a TV producer heard one of his songs while riding in a cab.

- Lucy calls Charlie Brown “Charlie” in a scene right before she talks about the commercialization of Christmas. This is the only time she ever calls him by his first name only in any Peanuts special. In all the other specials, she always calls him by his complete name – Charlie Brown.

- TV execs were sure “A Charlie Brown Christmas” would flop miserably. They didn’t like Guaraldi’s music, were concerned about Linus quoting the Bible, and wanted a canned laugh track to accompany the animation.

- The name of the Charlie Brown Christmas song that most people associate with the special is “Christmas Time is Here.”

- 50% of all TVs were tuned in to watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on the night it first aired in 1965.

Poinsettias are a flowering plant indigenous to southern Mexico and Central America, but they’ve become a common symbol of Christmas in America and around the world. How did this bright red plant become associated with the holidays?

According to Wikipedia, the plant’s association with Christmas began in Mexico in the 16th century, where legend tells of a young girl who was too poor to provide a gift for the celebration of Jesus’ birthday. The tale goes that the child was inspired by an angel to gather weeds from the roadside and place them in front of the church altar. Crimson “blossoms” sprouted from the weeds and became beautiful poinsettias.

Poinsettias, known as the Christmas Eve Flower (Flor de Buena Noche) in Mexico, slowly became associated with the celebration of Christ’s birth. The plant’s star-shaped leaf pattern is said to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem, and the red color represents the blood sacrifice through the crucifixion of Jesus. Franciscan friars in Mexico started including the plants in their Christmas celebrations in the 17th century, and the plants came to the United States in 1825.

They were introduced here by Joel Roberts Poinsett, an amateur botanist and the first United States Minister to Mexico, and that’s how the plants, whose scientific name is Euphorbia pulcherrima, came to be known as poinsettias.

Their rise in popularity in the United States and around the world was promoted by the Ecke family of California, which started selling the plants in the early 1900s and developed a way of grafting poinsettias to make a fuller, more compact plant. This secret allowed them to have a virtual monopoly on the poinsettia market until the 1990s. They also promoted the plants by sending free poinsettias to TV stations to display on air and by appearing on programs like The Tonight Show and Bob Hope’s Christmas specials.

Today the association between poinsettias and Christmas is well established and will undoubtedly be with us for a long time to come.

It’s been a holiday tradition to burn a Yule log even before there was a Christmas. It signifies that it is time for friends and family to gather near for songs, stories and fun, and until the Yule log burns out, there’s no more working.

In its beginnings, the Yule log was burned as a celebration of the winter solstice. Yule ran from several weeks before the winter solstice to a couple weeks after in Scandinavia, as this was the coldest and darkest time of the year. And though the Yule log is named from this Scandinavian tradition, the practice of burning a special log during the winter months was a tradition in many countries across the world.

When Pope Julius I decided to celebrate Christmas around the time of the Winter Solstice during the fourth century, the Yule log tradition continued, but the light from the burning log represented the light of the Savior instead of the light of the sun.

Traditionally on or about Christmas Eve, a big log was brought into the home or a larger gathering place. People would sing and tell stories while children danced and played. The log was even decorated, and food and wine were placed upon it as offerings. It was also a way of starting the New Year with a fresh start as a person’s mistakes and shortcomings were burned in the flame of the log. Songs were sung and stories told. Children danced. Offerings of food and wine and decorations were placed upon it. The log was never allowed to burn completely; leftover pieces of it were kept in the house to start next years log and also to bring good luck to the home. It was believed those pieces would protect the home from fire, lightning or other acts of nature. Ashes of the log would be placed in wells to keep the water good and spread at the roots of trees, vines and sprinkled upon gardens and crops to ensure a good harvest.

During the holidays, millions of families sit down to watch classic family holiday movies such as A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman and others that have become part of our popular culture. But what do you really know about these movies? Here is some fun trivia.

Remember the scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas where the Whos hold hands in a circle and sing? The title of that song is “Fahoo Forays,” and if that doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s because the words are made up. Dr. Seuss invented some of the words of the song and tried to make them sound like classical Latin. Seuss was so successful that some people thought it was real Latin and wrote the studio to ask for a translation.

In A Year Without A Santa Claus, if you look closely when the little girl is writing the word Christmas with a crayon during the Blue Christmas song, you’ll notice that the letters seem to appear before she actually writes them.

The Grinch has blue eyes – but only after his heart grows while he’s standing on the top of Mt. Crumpet. Before that, his eyes are red.

June Foray, who was the voice of little Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, was also the voice of the teacher in Frosty the Snowman and the drummer boy’s mother in The Little Drummer Boy.

In Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Hermey is the only elf who doesn’t have pointy ears.

- The only time Lucy ever calls Charlie Brown just “Charlie” in a Peanuts special is just before she discusses the commercialization of Christmas in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Thereafter, she always calls him Charlie Brown .

Long before the birth of Jesus Christ, wreaths were commonly used as a symbol of celebration and achievement. Laurel wreaths were used to crown the winners in the early Olympic games, and the tradition of bestowing wreaths upon the winners of sporting events is still followed today in some events, such as horse racing and car racing. But now wreaths are most often used for another celebration – Christmas.

The first Christmas Advent wreath was invented in the 1830s by Johann Hinrich Wichern, a Protestant parson who ran an orphanage in in Hamburg, Germany. Wichern made a wooden ring and affixed red and white candles on one side of it to help the children count the days until Christmas. During each service of daily prayer, a child would light one candle, until on Christmas Eve all of them would be illuminated. It is thought that children liked this ring so much that they decorated it with evergreen twigs. Later the number of candles was reduced to four and evergreen boughs became an important component of the rings.

The evergreen branches represent everlasting life brought through Jesus Christ, and the circular shape of the wreath represents God himself, with no beginning and no end.

Typically, three of the candles in an advent wreath are violet-colored, and one is rose-colored, but some choose to use all purple or all blue candles. When used in household devotion, one candle is lit on the first evening of Advent, which falls on a Saturday. Each Saturday thereafter during Advent another candle is lit. Some wreaths have a large white candle in the center which is lit on Christmas Day to signify Christ’s birth.

The tradition of Advents wreaths took a while to catch on in Germany and spread throughout Europe, but by the time German immigrants came to America, they brought this tradition with them. Evergreen wreaths without candles also became a popular symbol of the holidays. Now it’s a household tradition for many families around the world to have a wreath made from evergreen hanging upon the front door of their home during the holidays.

Most cultures have some version of a Christmas stocking and there are many theories about the origin of the stockings left out for Santa to fill. History gives us no written records, so let’s look at some of the more interesting legends surrounding Christmas stockings history.

One legend surrounding the origins of the Christmas stockings features Odin, the principle god of Norse mythology and his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. The legend says that each year, during the Yule season, Odin would lead a great hunt. It goes on to state that children would place their boots near the chimney and leave them filled with hay, sugar, carrots and other treats to satisfy the hungry horse after the day’s hunt. Odin would then replace the food that Sleipnir ate with small gifts or candy to thank the children for their kindness and generosity.

Another legend involves Saint Nicholas and the three daughters of an poverty-stricken nobleman. Though the man and his family had once been happy and prosperous, they had fallen on hard times. Bad business decisions and the wife’s illness and subsequent death had led to a decline in the families fortune. By the time the daughter reached the age to wed the family was living in a small cottage and the father was devastated to realize that his daughters would not be able to marry, due to the lack of dowries. Though the villagers were sympathetic to the man’s plight, they knew he was proud and would not accept charity, even to salvage his daughters’ futures.

As he was passing through the small town, Saint Nicholas happened to hear the villagers talking about the sad plight of the girls and their father. Being the generous saint that he was, he wanted to help. Waiting until nightfall, he peered into the family’s windows and saw the girls freshly washed stockings hanging by the fireplace to dry. After the family was asleep, he snuck into the house and removed three bags of gold coins from his pouch. He placed a bag of coins in each of the girls’ stockings and left.

When the girls and their father arose in the morning, they found the bags of coins and their joyous voices could be heard far and wide. It is said that the girls were all married and they, as well as their father, lived happily ever-after.

The re-telling of this story led children to begin hanging their stocking by the fireplace or leaving their shoes outside the door, hoping that they too might be the recipient of gifts from Saint Nicholas.

The hanging of Christmas stockings remains one of Christmas’ more popular traditions. While it is clear that the Christmas stocking’s history will remain a mystery, hanging stockings on Christmas Eve is a custom is here to stay.