Bizarre Christmas 2012 UK BEST

In 2011, the Military Wives and Gareth Malone, both involved with the reality television show The Choir, outsold X Factor winners Little Mix and a host of social network campaigns for various novelty acts.[15][16] In 2012, a supergroup cover of "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother", supporting charities associated with the Hillsborough disaster, reached the number one ahead of The X Factor's James Arthur.[17] Following the UK Charts' move to Fridays,[18] the Christmas number one is revealed on Christmas Day whenever it falls on a Friday, such as in 2015 and 2020;[19][20] the former year's chart was the first in a decade to not feature the X Factor winner's single in the top two.[21][22] Amazon Music has released a number of exclusive festive tracks since 2018, recorded with acts such as Justin Bieber, Jess Glynne, and Ellie Goulding, none of which have topped the Christmas chart, though Goulding's track later reached number one.[23][24][25][26] More recently, non-traditional acts have been successful with novelty songs released for charity; most notably, YouTuber LadBaby achieved number one every year between 2018 and 2022, each time raising money for the Trussell Trust.[4][27]

LadBaby is the act with the most Christmas number ones with five, surpassing the Beatles' previous record in 2022.[4] On two occasions, in 1963 and 1967, the Beatles had both the Christmas number one and the number two, the first act to have achieved this. As part of two acts, George Michael repeated the feat with Band Aid and Wham! in 1984, and Ed Sheeran did so in 2017 with duets with Beyoncé and Eminem, and again in 2021 with duets with LadBaby and Elton John. Paul McCartney has been top eight times with various acts. Cliff Richard has spent four Christmases at number one; two as a solo act, one with The Shadows and one as part of Band Aid II. The Spice Girls later equalled the then-record of three consecutive Christmas number ones, from 1996 to 1998; Spice Girl Melanie C achieved a fourth Christmas number one as a member of the Justice Collective in 2012, which also gave Robbie Williams his third. In 2022, LadBaby became the first act to achieve five consecutive number ones.[28]

Christmas around the globe is celebrated with many customs and traditions. Often the traditions are similar with only slight variations from country to country, but some Christmas traditions are truly bizarre.

4) Most cultures decorate for Christmas, but in the Ukraine, the décor is a bit more bizarre. Ukrainian Christmas trees are adorned with silver and gold spider webs. This tradition was weaved from a story of a poor woman without any means to decorate for the holiday. As she slept, spiders spun webs of pure gold and silver to beautify her tree and bring her wealth.

Since 2012, millions of people like you have put on their jazziest jumpers for one day in December, donated £2 to Save the Children, and helped make the world better for children in the UK and around the world.

In fact, we love Christmas facts so much, we've only gone and collated together the best bits from around the web into one nifty little list of fun festive facts. We have a bunch of funny facts all about Christmas, plenty of little-known Xmas facts that will blow your mind and some downright bizarre Christmas trivia that will be great down at the pub quiz.

The Cabaret du Néant was a rather bizarre nineteenth-century bar, decorated with skeletons, pictures of dead bodies and coffins. According to this article from the Pall Mall Gazette, patrons could even take part in an eerie faux funeral.

First produced in 1928 and still in production today, this is one of the most recognizable Christmas dinnerware sets. It has a distinctive green trim and the gold standard of decorated Christmas trees. You can find a variation produced from 2006 to 2012 called Christmas Tree Garland, which is trimmed in festive bells and boughs of fir. 2b1af7f3a8