← Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis
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Merry Christmas to you. Gonna bloviate a little bit about the most famous holiday in history. About 80% of Americans cop to celebrating Christmas. 20%, they probably do, but they don't want to admit it because they're pagans or whatever they are. I don't even know. Anyway, some interesting fun facts. Trillion dollars. Trillion Spend November and December on Christmas in America. Oh, it's according to the National Retail Federation. Trillion bucks. A lot of Jack and the increased this year, 0.5% in Americans are averaging about $800 on Christmas gifts. That is down from a thousand. Earlier this year it was projected to be a thousand. It's down at 800. Last year is about a thousand. And there are 35 million real Christmas trees inhabiting homes across the country. 35 million, okay, I used to get them, but now I have a very realistic fake tree because I'm lazy and I just don't have the time to go out and drag it back here and do all that. But 35 million, that's a pretty big number. In 1836, Alabama was the first day to recognize Christmas as a holiday. Okay? In 1870, President Grant declared it a national holiday. Old Ulysses S. Grant, okay, Sam Grant they used to call him. So it took from Alabama's Perspicacity 1836-1870 to get the national holiday. And then the commercial people came in. You had Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. You had. That was Montgomery Ward, put that out. Then you had Santa Claus, who was a German invention. He came across pretty quickly. Germany started the Christmas tree tradition and the Santa Claus thing. Santa Claus is like Dutch. But the Germans grabbed them fast in the 1500s. Whoa. Now, Christmas was designated December 25th because nobody really knows a precise age when Jesus was born. I have it nailed down pretty tight in my book, Killing Jesus. But it was because it was so dismal in Europe in the end of December, you know, dark all the time and freezing. So they go, hey, we need a festival here to lighten things up. That's why it came about. If you look at all the holidays, they were kind of designed to break monotony or whatever it may be. But Christmas itself was basically first, not a religious holiday per se, and then it evolved into that. Now Jesus, we have pretty good documentation. Again, it's in Killing Jesus because it was a census ordered by Rome and for tax purposes, they want to tax everybody in the world. So Joseph and Mary, real people, they had to go from Nazareth into Bethlehem, which is where the family of David emanated to register. Tell The Romans, hey, we're here. Go ahead and taxes, because that's all you want, is tax. And that was true. So that we know happened. You don't know precisely, though, whether the baby was born before they made that trek or during. Okay. In the scriptures, it says during. The baby was in a manger. And Mary and Joseph didn't have any money. Joseph was a stone cutter. People go get mad at me, oh, no, he's a carpenter and his son was a carpenter. There are no trees. Okay? People lived in stone dwellings back then. So it's primarily a desert that Judea is inhabits. It's a desert. There are a few trees, but no one building homes with trees, stones. And that's what Joseph did. And that was pretty interesting. Now, there are a number of countries across the world ignore Christmas entirely. All the Muslim countries do. And then a lot of the Asian countries, so Cambodia, China, Japan, Vietnam, Laos don't have Christmas because they're Shinto or Buddhist or another religion that's not associated with Christianity. Mongolia, no Christmas there. Bhutan place I'd like to visit. Small country in the Himalayas. They're Buddhists. Okay, no Christmas. Maldives Islands off the coast of India. Supposed to be beautiful. Probably the most expensive place on Earth, the Maldives island. No Christmas, though. But I bet you if we were there, we'd see a little Christmas stuff. And let's see any place else? No, most of them are all Muslim. A lot of Muslim countries, though, if you go there. And so I was talking to a Japanese friend of mine, and I said, any Christmas at all over there, he goes, we have lights. Everything the lights are up because the new year, and that's where everything goes. The Chinese are big on New Year. They have a different New Year than we do. But in Tokyo, one of the most capitalist places on Earth, they're not selling you Santa. They're selling in New Year's. So that's what they do over there. But it's the money flow now here in the United States. It's one of the great traditions of our country. It really is. We got the music, we got the books, we got the TV shows, the Hallmark. I think the Hallmark network starts running Christmas movies in July. So we have all of that. And then we have a lot of states that are snow and pretty images. And so we're good. Christmas here. I. When I was a kid, that was by far my favorite. We're at a humble house, but my parents splurged and gave me neat stuff for Christmas. Little Ford Apache units. And I was big on the guns, you know. They bought me that. Those soldiers and trains. I have my Lionel trains to this day. So my parents did a nice job, but the whole neighborhood got involved. You know, everybody's going for hot chocolate. And this is in Levittown, Long Island. And everybody was caroling. So we go to caroling and people give you a dollar and you give it to charity. It was great. No downside at all. None. And we go to midnight Mass, you know, which is always a spectacle, the choir and all that. So I think America, you know, and I'm jingoistic, is the best place for Christmas on this planet. Although London's pretty good. London's pretty good. And I always make a habit of watching A Christmas Carol starring Alistair Sim. Sorry, Bill Murray. Okay, I'm going with the old one. The British actor Alistair Sim. My favorite. Anyway, we wish you and your family and your friends the greatest Christmas. Relax. Have fun. Goodwill. Try to carry it over if you can. We'll see you again. 2,026.