And Finally...Christmas in numbers

£435 the amount the average Brit is planning to fork out on Christmas this year, a decline from the £516 spent in 1999.

£318bn in cash is expected to be withdrawn from ATMs using debit and credit cards throughout December, according to research by Barclays.

£170 is spent by the average family on their Christmas dinner.

200,000 is the number of trees felled to make all the Christmas cards sent in the UK.

6th the day in January that marks the official end of Christmas - the day when the decorations should come down.

1.7bn Christmas cards are sent each year in Britain.

14,000 the number of babies that will be conceived in December.

15 the number of hours the average Briton takes to finish their Christmas shopping.

100m sales of the biggest festive single ever, White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby in 1942 in Holiday Inn. It won the Irving Berlin film Oscar for best song.

83square km of wrapping paper will end up in UK rubbish bins - enough to wrap up the island of Guernsey.

750,000the number of letters sent to Santa by children in the UK each year.

£1.6bn the money we spend on food and drink at Christmas.

220 per cent increase in church attendance in the UK over the holiday.

£4,000 was spent every second in the UK by internet shoppers on Cyber Monday, 7 December, which was expected to be the biggest day of shopping on the web in 2009.

1937 the date the first Xmas postage stamp was produced in Austria.

230,000 tons of food worth about £275 million is thrown away on average over the Christmas period.

£8.9bn will be spent by shoppers online over this Christmas, according to the Centre for Retail Research.

2004 was the year of the last official white Christmas - when snow was widespread across Northern Ireland, Scotland, parts of Wales, the Midlands and the North East of England.

4he highest chart position for Wizzard's much-loved 1973 festive single, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day.

1843 the year the first Christmas card was designed by J C Horsley.

59 The number of years Norway has given London a Christmas tree for Trafalgar Square in appreciation of Britain's help in the Second World War against the Nazis.

£50m is spent on buying more than 370 million mince pies over the Christmas period. And every Brit eats an average of 27 mince pies each.

9.58am the time you will have your first family argument on Christmas day, on average.

12,965 the world record for the most people dressed up as Santa, recorded by Guinness World Records on 9 September 2007 in Derry City, Northern Ireland.

85per cent of four-year-olds believe in Father Christmas

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