I hate to be the Charlie Brown to your Buddy the Elf, but Wired’s Ebeneezer Scrooge just dropped some serious truth bombs about Christmas, and they’re enough to stop Rudolph dead in his tracks (which is good for Finland, because according to Wired, Finlanders eat so much reindeer meat that they have to import dead Prancers and Dancers all the way from Russia).
Here are some highlights from the video: The average person gains one pound over the holiday season, and according the New England Journal of Medicine, that person will likely never shed said pound. Americans spend about $616.9 billion on gifts, which is more than half the entire government budget. Nearly 83 million trees are chopped down in North American and Europe every year for the holiday. And every year, we buy about 2.65 billion Christmas cards — that’s enough to fill an entire football field that’s 10 stories high. Merry Christmas, everyone!
Hankering for more gingerbread-themed videos? Watch our explainer on how to make your house greener:
