Everyone at Complete Power Wash wishes you and your family a happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year!
This is a great time of year for us at Complete Power Wash and we hope the same for you. We hope you get to find time to spend with friends and family. We also hope you find time to slow down, relax and spend some time thinking about the highlights of the year. Thank you to all of our customers, who were the highlights of our year. We look forward to serving you again in the new year. We hope and pray the new year is a great one for all of us.
To schedule our techs for a pressure washing appointment in the Tri-state area of Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, call our Hagerstown, MD office at 301-842-2290.
And while you’re waiting for ol’ St. Nick and the New Year to arrive, enjoy some interesting holiday trivia.
Christmas Trivia
1) When was Christmas originally celebrated?
A: January 6th. In the West, Christmas was always celebrated on December 25th. Now, except for a select few, like the Armenians, almost everyone who celebrates Christmas does so on December 25th.
2) In what century was the first written use of Xmas?
A: The 16th Century. The “X” in Xmas comes from the Greek letter Chi which looks like an “X”. The letter “X” has long been used as an abbreviation for Christ since the Greek word for Christ begins with what looks like an “X”. Christ was often written with the letters Chi (X) Rho (p) which looks like Xp. The Chi-Rho symbol representing Christ looks like this:Merry Chi Rho Mass!
3) The modern Santa Claus is mainly a mix of what two figures?
A: Saint Nicholas and Father Christmas. St. Nicholas was a Greek bishop who lived in the 4th century and was famous for his generosity and gift giving. Sinterklaas (Dutch for St. Nicholas) gives gifts on December 5th and is based on St. Nicholas. Father Christmas dates back to the 16th Century and is widely considered synonymous with the modern Santa Claus.
4) What was the poem “Twas the Night Before Christmas” originally titled?
A: A Visit from St. Nicholas. It was anonymously published in 1823. It has been attributed to, and claimed by, Clement Clarke Moore but there is some controversy as to whether he actually wrote it.
5) Who created the first electric light Christmas display?
A: Thomas Edison. In 1880 he put up the first Christmas display made from electric lights to advertise his light bulbs. A few years later an inventor named Edward Johnson, a colleague of Thomas Edison, created the first string of Christmas lights.
New Years Trivia
1) How long have people celebrated the new year?
A: Celebrating the new year dates back 4,000 years. The ancient Babylonians were the first recorded people to celebrate the new year 4 millennia ago, History.com stated. While the calendar we use now to mark the new year is the Gregorian calendar, the Babylonians celebrated the new year based on the moon. For them, the new year arrived during the first new moon that occurred after the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox is a day on which the amounts of darkness and daylight are equal, and it occurs in late March.
2) What is the history of the famous New York City New Year’s Eve celebration?
A: The first Times Square celebration had to do with The New York Times. The first New Year’s Eve party in Times Square occurred in 1904, and was a celebration of The New York Times’s new headquarters, the Times Square official website states. At the time, the Times tower was the second-tallest building in Manhattan. The celebration involved a street festival that lasted all day, which ended in a show of fireworks. More than 200,000 people were in attendance.
3) When did the famous ball become part of the celebration?
A: The New Year’s Eve Ball first dropped in 1907. While the tradition of a Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration dates back to 1904, the ball was not dropped at this event until 1907, according to Times Square’s website. The first Ball weighed 700 pounds and had a diameter of 5 feet. It was constructed out of wood and iron, and had one hundred light bulbs on it.
