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1. Drink sachets (3,4)
1. Hand-held PCs
5. Proficient
2. Country, Saudi ...
9. Sensationalist (press) 3. Clip on
10. Tunisia’s neighbour 4. Day of rest
11. Stomach sore
5. Decelerates (5,2)
12. Literary masterpiece 6. Bring on (birth)
13. Impart knowledge
7. Coerced
15. Northern sea duck
8. Reading room
17. Blokes
14. Browbeaten
20. Dairy animal
16. Map within map
21. U-boat
17. Aggressive dog
23. Lawn tools
18. Inquire
27. Classify
19. Mayday call (1,1,1)
30. Get to feet
22. Highbrow person
32. Partial exchange (5-2) 24. Gathers
33. Cruel
25. Shoelace holes
34. Unabbreviated
26. Magazine chiefs
35. Money put by (4,3)
28. Sudden
36. Senses
29. Of race & culture
37. Deviousness
30. Comfortably
31. Blame
18 Festive facts
1. The Germans made the first artificial Christmas trees out
of dyed goose feathers.
2. The traditional three colours of Christmas are green,
red, and gold. Green has long been a symbol of life; red
symbolises the blood of Christ, and gold represents
wealth.
10. J
ames Pierpont’s 1857 song Jingle Bells was first
called One Horse Open Sleigh and was written for
Thanksgiving.
11. B
efore turkey, the traditional Christmas meal in England
was a pig’s head and mustard.
3. X
means Christ in Greek so to shorten the word Christmas
we sometimes use Xmas.
12. S
anta has different names around the world - Kriss
Kringle in Germany, Le Befana in Italy, Pere Noel in
France and Deushka Moroz (Grandfather Frost) in Russia.
4. Christmas trees were first decorated with foods such as
apples, nuts and dates.
13. In 1999, residents of the US state of Maine built the
world’s biggest ever snowman. He stood at 113ft tall.
5. The first New Year’s celebration dates back 4,000 years.
14. T
he chances of a white Christmas are just 1 in 10 for
England and Wales, and 1 in 6 for Scotland and Northern
Ireland.
6. According to statistics from the National Insurance Crime
Bureau in the US, more vehicles are stolen on New Year’s
Day than any other holiday.
15. A
lthough now mostly vegetarian, in Victorian times,
mince pies were made with beef and spices.
7. US scientists calculated that Santa would have to visit
he tradition of putting tangerines in stockings comes
822 homes a second to deliver all the world’s presents on 16. T
from 12th-century French nuns who left socks full of fruit,
Christmas Eve, travelling at 650 miles a second.
nuts and tangerines at the houses of the poor.
8. Hanging stockings out comes from the Dutch custom
17. N
early 60 million Christmas trees are grown each year in
of leaving shoes packed with food for St Nicholas’s
Europe.
donkeys. He would leave small gifts in return.
9. The world’s tallest Xmas tree at 221ft high was erected in
a Washington shopping mall in 1950
Answers on page 5
108
18. T
he world’s tallest Xmas tree at 221ft high was erected in
a Washington shopping mall in 1950.