1. Reindeer lose their antlers every year
2. The man who wrote "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is the same man who wrote "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree"
3. If the song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is taken literally, there are enough presents given for every day of the year (except for leap years)
4. Ukka is the Finnish name for its traditional Christmas sauna
5. There is a man whose job includes checking the roof of the Met Office in London on every hour of Christmas Day for signs of snowflakes
6. Holly usually has its male and female branches on the same tree
7. Margaret Thatcher was once enraged to hear the tune of the socialist anthem "The Red Flag" playing from her family Christmas tree
8. Silver fulminate, the explosive found in Christmas crackers, is highly dangerous in larger quantities
9. Shakespeare never mentions the word "Christmas" in his plays
10. In 1997, Manchester Airport's security machines were found to be unable to tell Christmas puddings from Semtex.
Ans
1 T Annoyingly for people showing off their reindeer to tourists at Christmas, male reindeer usually lose their antlers shortly before the Christmas period. Females tend to lose theirs in the New Year. Reindeer or Caribou are the only animals where both males and females grow antlers.
2 T Johnny Marks wrote the former in 1949 and the latter in 1958.
3 F Not quite. If you add up the 12 x 1 partridges, 11 x 2 turtle doves, 10 x 3 French hens and so on you end up with a total of 364 gifts. Just one short. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is based on a French song about the 12 months of the year.
4 F Ukka is actually the goat Santa rides in the tradition of a few countries including Finland and Holland.
5 F With the big bets put on the occurrence or otherwise of a "white Christmas" in London, this monitoring is done, but a number of Met Office workers take shifts. Christmas Day actually falls in the middle of a warm spell in London and there were only 10 White Christmases here between 1900 and 2000.
6 F That would be true of most plants but holly (scientific name Ilex) is usually dioecious (pr. di-ee-shus) meaning that individual trees are either male or female. Note that on a holly tree the leaves are generally less prickly the higher up the tree you go.
7 T Of course, "The Red Flag" has the same tune as "O Christmas Tree".
8 T Unfortunately, a number of people have ended up with faces full of shrapnel trying to make this substance that is also found in explosive toy caps. If you see a recipe for making this stuff DON'T try it.
9 F He mentions it surprisingly little but he does mention it more than once, the most famous example being in "Love's Labour's Lost" where he says "At Christmas I no more desire a rose, than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows". Marcellus in Hamlet does refer to the day of "our Saviour's birth".
10 T An airport spokesman said Christmas puddings - made of dried fruit, fat and spices - had an unusual density, similar to Semtex.
