Holiday Traditions That Are Becoming A Thing Of The Past

The days of getting toasted with the boss at the office Christmas party are slowly declining. This year, 70% of employs will attend the annual event which may sound like a lot, but it's not when last year that number was up to 90%. With the economy the way it is, more and more business are looking for ways to cut expenses. And here's another reason ya might not have expected.

Cash-strapped companies looking to avoid party-related lawsuits have turned into teetotalers and cut boozy office bashes from 90% of all parties in 2000 to 79% last year, according to Amrop Battalia Winston's figures.

It glitters ! It shines ! It exposed generations of children to lead poisoning and brain defects. Yeah, sorry to say that tinsel did not have such a shiny beginning.

The boxes of tinsel became ubiquitous and could turn any tree into a sparkling crystal centerpiece. The bad news? Some of that tinsel was aluminum mixed with lead that helped it hang better on tree branches, but also caused terminal defect in people.

Tinsel got a  safety makeover but by then the general public had grown tired of tinsels flammable ways and sales began to plummet.

No Christmas season would be complete without the lights to make it look like a winter wonderland, but in years past those high wattage lights made it more of a Christmas battle zone. Those big bulbs you use to see on your Grandparents house are a thing of the past because of their tendency to set everything from a tree to a house on fire.

Manufacturers still advise turning them on their bases so their bulbs don't come in contact with a tree's needles and set it ablaze. The large C9 lights are just bad news for indoor use altogether and best kept outside.

Now, thanks to LED technology you don't have to worry about being one of the 300 fires and 14 fire-related deaths caused by Christmas lights on average each year.

Who needs Mother Nature to make it snow when you have fake snow in a convenient spray can ! Spray it on anything ! Well, anything you don't mind potentially killing. Yep, when the fake snow in a can hit stores in the 1930's it included one not so jolly ingredient. Asbestos. Yes,the stuff that causes mesothelioma and even death.

Even when asbestos was taken out of the mix, changing attitudes toward aerosols and some municipalities' refusal to recycle Christmas trees coated in the stuff put the squeeze on spray cans of the stuff. Now exiled to certain craft stores and eBay, aerosol cans of fake snow exist on the fringes of holiday decor.

With a warning of possible death on the can, its no wonder fake snow is on its way out.

It's still MY favorite Christmas movie of all time, but now it seems George Bailey has been edged out by that kid who gets his tongue stuck to the frozen flag pole in A Christmas Story. Apparently the big wigs over at Hollywood failed to get the message of It's A Wonderful Life because this story all end over a money battle.

Republic Pictures heard just about enough of America singing Auld Lang Syne and weeping every year without anyone getting a cut of it and enforced its claim on the film's copyright in 1993. That copyright went to Paramount and after sprawling parent company Viacom bought Republic in 1998. Since the copyright clampdown, former GE holding and recent Comcast subsidiary NBC has held the broadcast license on the film and been particularly stingy about it. It's A Wonderful Life now airs only twice a year: Once on Christmas Eve and, this year, on Saturday, Dec. 3

And that's not the only Holiday classic to take a hit. Even Charlie Brown got sucker punched by those obnoxious singing tweens on Glee.

A Charlie Brown Christmas not only came in behind an episode of Glee and lost more than 800,000 viewers in its second half-hour, but dropped more than 30% of its audience from the year before.