• Each year, approximately 8.9 percent of all Christmas trees erected in people’s homes will fall over at least once, according to the group known as the Consortium of Superior Christmas Tree Stand Manufacturers.• Dairy farmers have long known that adding one part bovine urine to 25 parts fresh water and two parts maple syrup will generally extend the life of a Christmas Tree by as many as five days.

• According to a 2002 survey by Gourmets of North America and Northern Europe, fewer than one in one hundred people have ever had a figgy pudding.

• The most people ever to bungie jump while wearing a Santa Suit happened on Christmas Day, 1989 at Gravity Canyon, New Zealand, when 42 people dressed in red with white wigs and beards made a jump at the same time.

• The average household in the United States used 16.72 square yards of wrapping paper for the various end-of-year holidays in 2005. If non-christian households are excluded the figure rises to 19.74 square yards.

• AAA estimates that due to on-line shopping the average American household’s gasoline usage in the quest for gifts has declined 1.95 percent in each of the past five years.

• Red gift-wrapping ribbon outsells all other colors combined.

• Americans will spend approximately $12.762 million having gifts inscribed with names and monograms in the 2007 holiday season.

• Despite all the automobile ads depicting people getting a car as a gift, the Automobile Dealers & Re-Sellers Association of America estimates that only 12,240 cars will be given as holiday gifts this year and well under half of those will truly be surprises.

• Although there is a popular myth that a duck’s quack does not echo, the opposite is true. In 2003, researchers at Texas A&M determined that a duck’s quack will echo for the longest amount of time of any animal noise.

• The duck-billed platypus only shares two percent of its genome with a duck. In contrast, ducks and snakes share 31 percent of their genomes.

• In many European countries it is considered good luck to “adopt” a duck during the Christmas season.

• During the Salem witch trials, three ducks were hanged as witches’ familiars. Another was accused, but cleared when magistrate Jonathan Corwin’s daughter adopted it as a pet.

• The children’s game, Duck Duck Goose, originated in the 1800s in Jamaica, where it was played by children on coffee plantations.

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