Happy Holidays!

ASPPA Connect will not appear on Monday, Dec. 24, as the ASPPA office will be closed. We’ll be back on Wednesday, Dec. 26. We wish you happy holidays — and offer a few little-known facts concerning the holiday season:

• The first Christmas card was sent in 1843 and was designed by John Horsley.
• James Edgar was the first person to wear a tailored Santa costume and walk around a store distributing gifts, in 1890.
• The best-selling single record of all time is Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.”
• Robert L. May created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1939, when he wrote a Christmas-themed story poem to attract customers to the Montgomery Wards department store in Chicago.
• Thomas Edison invented electric Christmas lights in 1880.
• “Jingle Bells” became the first song ever broadcast from outer space in 1965.
• The political satirist Thomas Nast drew a picture of Santa Claus for the Jan. 1, 1881 issue of Harper’s Weekly that became Santa’s visual prototype.
• The first artificial Christmas trees were made in Germany in the 19th century and were made of goose feathers painted green.