Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Explainer: Christmas 2018 by the numbers
Explainer: Christmas 2018 by the numbers
Feb 1, 2026 9:46 AM

$75– Average amount U.S. consumers spent on real Christmas trees in 2017.

$107– Average amount U.S. consumers spent on fake Christmas trees in 2017.

27,400,000– Number of real Christmas trees sold in the U.S. in 2017.

21,100,000– Number of fake Christmas trees sold in the U.S. in 2017.

7– Average growing time in years for a Christmas tree.

350 million–Number of Christmas trees currently growing on Christmas tree farms.

329.2 million– Current population of the United States.

$27.21— The energy costs of lighting a six-foot Christmas tree, lit 12 hours a day for 40 days, decorated with various light types.

$1,500,000,000– Estimated value of U.S. imports of Christmas tree ornaments from China between January and September 2016.

$22,700,000,000–Estimated retail sales by the nation’s department stores (including leased departments) in December 2016. This represents a decrease of $1 billion in retail sales from December of the previous year.

42.7 percent— Estimated percentage of charitable giving that occurs between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

$794– Average amount people in the U.S. estimated they’ll spend on Christmas presents in 2018.

108,000,000— Average number of homes Santa Claus has to visit on December 25 (assuming there is at least one “nice” child in each).

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
A Case against Chimeras: Part IV
The penultimate installment of the series on the biblical/theological case against chimeras focuses on the impact and significance of redemption. Redemption – Romans 8:18–27 Flowing out of our discussion on creation and fall, it is the recognition that there still are limits on human activity with regard to animals that is most important for us in this discussion. The apostle Paul notes that “the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the...
A Case against Chimeras: Part I
This week will feature a five part series, with one installment per day, putting forth my presentation of a biblical-theological case against the creation of certain kinds of chimeras, or human-animal hybrids. Part I follows below. Advances in the sciences sometimes appear to occur overnight. Such appearances can often be deceiving, however. Rare is the technological or scientific advance that does not follow years upon years of research, trial and error, failure and experimentation. The latest ing from the field...
Becker and Posner on DDT
This week, University of Chicago faculty members Richard A. Posner and Gary S. Becker discuss and debate the relationship between DDT and the fight against malaria on their blog. As a self-proclaimed “strong environmentalist” who supports “the ban on using DDT as a herbicide,” Posner writes first about the contemporary decline in genetic diversity due in large part to the rate of species extinction. (Posner has issued a correction: “Unforgivably, I referred to DDT as a ‘herbicide.’ It is, of...
A Change of Climate at The Economist
At the request of Andy Crouch, who is among other things editorial director for The Christian Vision Project at Christianity Today, I have taken a look at the editorial from The Economist’s special issue from Sept. 9. To recap, Andy asked me, “what are your thoughts about The Economist’s special report on climate change last week, in which they conclude that the risks of climate change, and the likely manageable cost of mitigation, warrant the world, and especially the US,...
A Case against Chimeras: Part II
Part II of our week-long series on the ethics of chimeras begins with an examination of the creation account in the book of Genesis. Creation – Genesis 1:26–30 The creation account in Genesis provides us with essential insights into the nature of the created world, from rocks and trees to birds and bees. It also tells us important things about ourselves and the role of human beings in relationship to the rest of creation. The distinctions between various parts of...
A Case against Chimeras: Part III
Part III of our series focuses on the human fall into sin and the disastrous consequences that follow from it. Fall – Genesis 9:1–7 The harmonious picture of the created order is quickly marred, however, by the fall of human beings. The fall has prehensive effects, both on the nature of humans themselves, and on the rest of creation. The corruption of the relationship between humans and the rest of the created order is foreshadowed in the curses in Genesis...
The Catholicity of the Reformation: Musings on Reason, Will, and Natural Law, Part 1
This post will introduce what I intend to be an extended series concerned with recovering and reviving the catholicity of Protestant ethics. Protestant catholicity? Isn’t this an oxymoron? It e as a surprise in light of mon stereotype of Protestant theology, but the older Protestant understanding of reason, the divine will, and natural law actually provided a bulwark against the notion of a capricious God, unbounded by truth and goodness, as Pope Benedict recently pointed out in relation to Islam’s...
The Green Old Party
A਋it of green conservative politics for your Friday – You’ll see why in a minute. First, read this blog post by the Sierra Club on Linc Chafee (Republican, RI), and then this: Meet Wayne Gilchrest, Republican member of the House of Representatives, First Congressional District of Maryland, former house painter, teacher, Vietnam veteran — and past, present and future canoeist who has yet to find himself up that well-known proverbial creek without a paddle, though he must think at times...
The Inevitable Loophole
On yet another day in a long season of bad news for Catholic schools in major urban areas, Chicago’s historic high school seminary is slated to close. Michael J. Petrilli addresses the broader context of the problem in this analysis on NRO. The first part of the article lays out the by now familiar reasons for the epidemic of Catholic school closures in cities such as Detroit and Boston. More interesting is the second part, in which Petrilli reveals that...
BreakPoint’s ‘The Point’
Chuck Colson introduces a new initiative at BreakPoint, a blog called “The Point,” which will feature contributions from “sixteen people blogging on pretty much everything under the sun: persecution of Christians, literary edy troupes, AIDS, the ments on Islam, TV dramas . . . you name it, they’re blogging about it.” It’s been added to our blogroll. Check it out. ...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved