George Bailey's imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody. Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be had he never been born.

In 1995, Rat Pack member Dean Martin died on Christmas Day, at the age of 78. The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, died on Christmas Day, 2006. He was 73 years old and had been hospitalized for pneumonia. Actress, singer and comedian Eartha Kitt died of colon cancer on Christmas Day in 2008.

In one of the most famous and decisive moments of the American Revolution, General George Washington led his army across the Delaware River to Trenton, New Jersey, with the password "Victory or Death." In the evening of December 25, 1776, they captured 1,000 Hessian soldiers in a surprise attack that raised morale in Washington's troops and turned the tide of the war.

The flight into Egypt is a biblical event described in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:13-23). Soon after the visit by the Magi, who had learned that King Herod intended to kill the infants of that area, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him to flee to Egypt with Mary and his infant son Jesus.

It is rare to find a Spaniard who will risk poisoning their fate for the coming year by skipping the New Year's Eve grapes, one for each stroke of midnight.

Angels usually appear on top of Christmas trees, representing their role in the holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus.

The plot of Jingle All the Way focuses on two rival fathers, workaholic Howard Langston (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and stressed out postal worker Myron Larabee (Sinbad), both desperately trying to get a Turbo-Man action figure for their respective sons on a last minute shopping spree on Christmas Eve.

On the third day of Christmas my true love sent to me
Three french hens

Scrooge is the very antithesis of the person he worked for as a young man. Mr. Fezziwig is portrayed as a jovial, foppish man with a large Welsh wig.

Alabama was the first state in the U.S. to officially recognize Christmas in 1836. Oklahoma was the last state to declare Christmas a legal holiday in 1907.