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Familiar Holidays That Have Dirty Little Secrets

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You've probably heard about weird, dark holidays that obscure corners of the world whisper about in the dark. But it turns out that the big-ticket, sparkly, over-hyped holidays your grandma celebrates also have unexpected dark sides.

Either they have weirdly disturbing origin stories, or they're connected to deeply troubling events. Or both. For example:

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Entry by Andrea Meno

CRACKED c COM The world's first Christmas card featured underage drinking. The first commercial Christmas card, printed in the UK in 1843, showed thre

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Entry by PookieJones

The real St. Nick wasn't SO jolly. The Santa legend can be traced back to a 4th century bishop from Asia Minor. He was persecuted for his Christian fa

The word mistletoe may be derived from the old German mist, for dung, and tang, for branch. So you're basically kissing under the shit stick.

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Entry by Scott Laffey

Familiar Holidays That Have Dirty Little Secrets

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Entry by K. Haeg

CRAOR The Christmas song Do YOU Hear What I Hear tells the story of the Star of Bethlehem leading the magi to Christ. Produced in 1962, the song's w

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Entry by Fermosalua3

Puritans banned celebrating christmas in Massachusets! It was a criminal offense to publidy celebrate christmas from 1659 to 1681. ILLEGAL This was du

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Entry by Scott Laffey

Mother's Day founder Anna Jarvis spent her final days in a mental asylum. Funding to keep her in there allegedly came from flower and greeting card pu

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Entry by Chan Teik Onn

Familiar Holidays That Have Dirty Little Secrets

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Entry by K. Haeg

Snowmen are an iconic symbol of the joy of the holiday season and have inspired many heartfelt children's stories. However, in one of its earliest doc

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Entry by Gino Reyes

CRACKED CON ASBESTOS WAS ONCE SOLD AS FAKE SNOW FOR HOUSE DECOR. AS88STOS Pure White eROOF FIRE SNOW It was used in this scene in The Wizard of Oz.

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Entry by Andrea Meno

Christmas caused the Second English Civil War. The Puritans thought people got too drunk and promiscuous on Christmas, so they banned it in England fo

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Entry by mwjr

Our Halloween is rooted in the once-held belief that the dead would come back to exact their revenge. It was believed that the souls of the dead wande

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Entry by DingDongKun

Since 1962, the Chicago River has been dyed green every year on St. Patrick's day. However, disodium salt, the green dye used to color the river until

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Entry by rorilynn

Because it doesn't tarnish like other metals tinsel used to be made out of lead CRACKED COM

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Entry by Wyrmologist

Coventry Carol is a carol from the 1500S that references the events of Massacre of the Innocents in the Bible, wherein King Herod orders the killing

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Entry by Andrea Meno

Holly is hung for Christmas because it symbolizes Christ's suffering. The sharp leaves represent his crown of thorns, and the red berries represent th

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Entry by YappyDoo

Maulana Karenga, the man who invented Kwanzaa, went to prison for torturing two black women whom he thought were conspiring against him. The women wer

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Entry by PookieJones

Santa isn't the first magical creature to slide down a chimney. Many tales depicted the fireplace as the gap between our and the supernatural world, b

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For more, check out 21 Holiday Traditions With Shockingly Bizarre Origins and 21 Amazing Holidays In Other Countries We Should Steal.

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