- Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, is popularly thought to have introduced the practice of decorating a tree at Christmas time. This is in fact a misunderstanding, he only intended to use it as firewood, but did not bother to remove the smaller branches.
- The tradition of using pine scented disinfectants stems from the Christmas treat of breaking off small branches from the tree to use as lavatory brushes.
- If you take pine cones and carefully spray them with gold and/or silver paint and thread them on pieces of twine, you will be following in the great Christmas tradition of taking something which is, of itself, perfectly innocuous and turning it into something which no-one wants or would have in the house would it not that a member of the family produced it.
- The use of fairy lights to decorate the tree is a throwback to when people used to visit the homes of their enemies during the season of goodwill. On leaving, the visitors would set fire to the tree in an attempt to burn down their enemy's house.
- The practice of dancing at Hogamanay began as a natural reaction to the state of the carpet around the base of the tree by this time.
- In order to appease the sylphs which may have been offended by the felling of the tree, it was common practice to tie a fairy to the topmost branch. In later years, a plastic one has sufficed.
- 17.71% of all Christmas trees are sold in December.
- Pine trees have much in common with dogs. If you brush the pine needles the wrong way, you'll get bark.
- Two lumps of coal, a carrot, a scarf and a hat are all you need to decorate a fine Christmas tree.
- Pine trees can be found as Christmas decorations throughout much of the Western World, but as Christ would say, "you'll never make a chair out of that."
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