Christmas is almost upon us.  With only days to go!

Here at TNT Post we want to spread some Christmas cheer and if you follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn you may have seen a number of #Christmasfacts that we have been providing over this festive season.  If you haven’t managed to read them, here are our 20 facts about Christmas:

1 – It is estimated that over 1.8 billion Christmas cards are sent annually in the UK

2 – It has been estimated that on average as much as 83sq km of wrapping paper is used over Christmas

3 – It has been reported that over 6 million trees were bought last Christmas in the UK

4 – Over 200,000 trees are used each year to produce Christmas cards

5 – When kids post letters to Santa, if the letter just has ‘Santa’ on it, it goes to Belfast, but if it has ‘Santa, Lapland’ on it, it goes there

6 – The first Christmas card sent in the UK was in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole

7 – Approximately £900 million will be spent on Christmas card stamps this year

8 – UK internet shoppers visited retail sites 107 million times on Christmas day in 2012

9 – If all the Christmas cards sent in the UK each year were stacked, the tower would reach the International Space Station

10 – The World Record for sending the most Christmas cards in one year is held by Werner Erhard of USA who, in 1975, wrote and sent 62,824 Christmas cards

11 – Postmen in Victorian England were popularly called “robins”.  This was because their uniforms were red and the Christmas cards often showed a robin delivering Christmas mail

12 – The long shopping spree before Christmas began in America when relatives of soldiers posted overseas in the Second World War were encouraged to mail gifts early

13 – The first Christmas celebrated in Britain is thought to have been in York in 521AD

14 -  In the nineteenth century, the British Post Office used to deliver cards on Christmas morning

15 – The first Christmas stamp was released in Canada in 1898

16 – The postcode for Father Christmas is HOH OHO

17 – Average person in Britain sends 50 Christmas cards a year

18 – The 23rd and 24th of December are the busiest shopping days on the high street.  This may be due to how close Christmas is and many retailers cutting prices

19 – US scientists calculated that Santa would have to visit 822 homes a second to deliver all the world’s presents on Christmas Eve, travelling at 650 miles a second

20 – The total spend on Christmas by UK households in 2013 is expected to £22.3 billion