Spending time with your family during the holidays is a great break from the everyday stresses of school and work, but the inevitable topic of politics is bound to come up.

A time that is supposed to be a day of joy and peace can quickly turn disastrous with one wrong comment. While it is often best to sit back and hold your tongue when these annoying disagreements come along, it may be better to try and change the subject.

To get the dinner table back to the Christmas spirit, it may be a good idea to blurt out random surprising Christmas trivia to get conversation back on track.

Here are 50 “did you know…” Christmas facts to help you out during the holidays:

Christmas Songs:

1. “Silent Night” is the most recorded Christmas song in history, with over 733 different versions copyrighted since 1978.

2. “White Christmas” is the best-selling song of all time

3. “Jingle Bells” was originally supposed to be for Thanksgiving

4. Brenda Lee recorded “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” when she was only 13 years old.

5. Paul McCartney’s Christmas song is widely regarded as the worst of all the songs he ever recorded yet he earns $400,000 a year off of it.

Foods:

6. The first batch of eggnog in America was crafted at Captain John Smith’s Jameston settlement in 1607 and got its name from the word “grog,” which refers to any drink made with rum.

7. Last year, 4.2 million Christmas dinners were wasted across the United Kingdom, according to Unilever.

8. Studies show that Christmas is the second most popular drinking day, second to New Year’s Eve

9. Christmas Dinner usually contains over 7,000 calories

10. Candy Canes were invented to keep kids quiet during church

Books/Movies:

11. It only took Dickens about six weeks to write A Christmas Carol.

12. Ebenezer Scrooge’s famous line “Bah Humbug” almost never existed. Charles Dickens’ initial choice was “Bah Christmas.”

13. Survey results showed that the most popular Christmas film of all time is "Home Alone," with "The Muppet Christmas Carol" second, and "It’s a Wonderful Life" third.

14. In The Grinch, the prosthetics and makeup Jim Carrey wore took three hours every day to put together.

15. Tom Hanks voiced six characters in the film "The Polar Express."

Characters:

16. The Montgomery Ward department store created Rudolph the Reindeer as a marketing gimmick to encourage children to buy their Christmas coloring books.

17. The image of Santa Claus flying his sleigh began in 1819 and was created by Washington Irving (the same author who though up the Headless Horseman).

18. Coca-Cola was the first company that used Santa Claus during the winter season for promotion.

19. “Frosty the Snowman” was a character in a song before he became a TV special.

20. “Frosty the Snowman” was a song before it was a TV special.

Christmas Trees:

21. Some zoos take donated Christmas trees and use them as food for the animals.

22.You would have to use your artificial tree for more than 20 years for it to be ‘greener’ than buying a fresh-cut tree annually.

23. Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition.

24. It takes around 6-8 years for a Christmas tree to be fully grown.

25. On average, two-three Christmas trees are planted to replace each one harvested.

Decorations:

26. The three traditional colors of most Christmas decorations are red, green and gold.

27. The Christmas wreath was originally hung as a symbol of Jesus. The holly represents his crown of thorns and the red berries the blood he shed.

28. Tinsel was invented in 1610 in Germany and was once made of real silver.

29. Thomas Edison also invented the first strand of Christmas lights.

30. The idea of gingerbread houses stemmed from "Hansel and Gretel" because the play version first premiered on December 23, 1893.

Gifts:

31. Bicycle, the U.S. playing card company, manufactured cards to give all the Prisoners of War in Germany during World War II as Christmas presents.

32. Almost 28 sets of LEGO are sold every second during the Christmas season.

33. The Rubik's Cube was the highest selling Christmas toy in 1980.

34. Hallmark introduced their first Christmas cards in 1915.

35. More than 3 billion Christmas cards are sent in the U.S. alone, every year.

Records:

36. The tallest Christmas tree ever cut was a 221-foot Douglas fir that was displayed in 1950.

37. The largest snowman (actually referred to as a female) is 122 feet and 1 inch tall.

38. 30,000 people participated in the largest recorded Secret Santa, which was organized by Reddit in 2012.

39. The largest gathering of Santa Clauses was achieved by 13,000 participants on December 9, 2007 in Ireland.

40. The most expensively decorated Christmas tree was in Japan on December 7, 2002 and was decorated with 83 pieces of jewelry worth about $16 million.

Firsts:

41. The first Christmas was celebrated on December 25, AD 336 in Rome.

42. Alabama became the first US state to declare Christmas as a legal holiday in 1836 (and the last was Oklahoma in 1907).

43. The US issued the first Christmas postage stamp in 1962.

44. Franklin Pierce was the first president to place a Christmas tree in the White House.

45. A San Francisco Salvation Army captain started the first kettle fundraising drive in 1891.

Miscellaneous:

46. The ‘X’ in the abbreviation X-Mas comes from the Greek meaning of ‘X,’ which is Christ.

47. Visa cards are used 5-6 thousand times every minute during the Christmas season.

48. There were 6.8 million iOS and Android devices activated on Christmas day.

49. In the world, there are two islands that are named ‘Christmas’ – one is in the Pacific Ocean and the other in the Indian Ocean.

50. Telling scary ghost stories is an old Christmas Eve tradition that has died out in the past century.