Christmas Movie Trivia

A Paris. They fly to Paris, and Kate realizes mid-flight that Kevin was left behind at their house in the Chicago suburbs.

B Clarence. Clarence Odbody, Angel Second Class, who is still trying to earn his wings.

D A Red Ryder BB gun. Ralphie's full sales pitch is an official Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot range model air rifle. Every adult he tells has the same reply about his eye.

B The Plaza. He pays with his dad's credit card, which gets the attention of Tim Curry's suspicious concierge.

A Griswold. Clark and Ellen Griswold first hit the road in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983). Christmas Vacation was the third film in the series.

C A leg lamp. He thinks the word fragile on the crate says 'fra-gee-lay' and decides it must be Italian.

C James Stewart. It was Stewart's first film after serving as a bomber pilot in World War II.

B Tom Hanks. Hanks performed several roles with motion capture, including the conductor, the hobo, Santa and the boy's father.

A A bell from the sleigh. Only people who truly believe can hear it ring.

C Tim Allen. Allen was starring in Home Improvement at the time, and the movie opened at No. 1.

A Alan Rickman. It was Rickman's first feature film. He went on to play Snape in Harry Potter and Harry in Love Actually.

C Their houses. Diaz's Amanda leaves her Los Angeles mansion for Iris's cottage in the English countryside, and Iris gets the mansion.

B Turbo-Man. It hit theaters the same holiday season as the real Tickle Me Elmo shopping frenzy of 1996.

D Michael Caine. Caine has said he played it completely straight, as if acting with real people, and that's a big part of why it works.

D Feed the mogwai. The other two rules: keep it away from bright light and never get it wet.

B A dentist. He gets his wish in the end by pulling the Abominable Snow Monster's teeth.

D A small, droopy real tree. Linus wraps his blanket around the base, and the gang has it decorated by the end.

D Billy Bob Thornton. Tony Cox plays his partner, Marcus, who works as his elf.

B He crawls into Santa's sack. It happens on Christmas Eve at an orphanage, and Papa Elf raises him as one of his own.

D Vermont. Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye stage the show at a Vermont inn run by their old Army commander, General Waverly.

A Marley. Old Man Marley turns out to be a lonely, kind man who saves Kevin from the burglars with a snow shovel.

A A children's book publisher. Walter works at Greenway Press in the Empire State Building, which is how Buddy finds him.

D Gimbels. Gimbels was a real New York store and Macy's longtime rival, but its Herald Square store closed in 1986, years before Elf was made.

B A Jelly of the Month Club membership. Cousin Eddie points out that it's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year.

D Johnny Galecki. Galecki was 14. Juliette Lewis played his sister, Audrey.

B The neighbors' dogs ate the turkey. The Bumpus hounds get the turkey. The waiters sing a Christmas carol for them anyway.

C Frank Capra. Capra often said it was his favorite of his own films, even though it lost money in theaters.

C An angel gets his wings. Zuzu says it at the very end, and Clarence has clearly earned his.

D The Post Office delivers bags of Santa letters. If the US Post Office says he's Santa, the judge reasons, the court can hardly argue.

B Chris Van Allsburg. Van Allsburg also wrote Jumanji, and The Polar Express won him his second Caldecott Medal.

D Jack Frost. Martin Short plays Jack Frost. The Tooth Fairy and Mother Nature show up as members of the Council of Legendary Figures.

C A TV network executive. Frank Cross runs a network that is staging a live Christmas Carol broadcast on Christmas Eve.

A Statler and Waldorf. Dickens gave Scrooge one dead partner. The Muppets gave him two, so the balcony hecklers could both be in it.

B Postman. His father sends him to a grim island town with orders to post 6,000 letters in a year.

C Aardman. Aardman usually works in clay. Arthur Christmas was its second computer-animated feature, made with Sony Pictures Animation.

B Holiday Inn. It won the Oscar for best original song. The 1954 film White Christmas was named after the song a dozen years later.

D Countdown to Christmas. The lineup now kicks off in October and runs through the end of December. Its sister channel's lineup goes by Miracles of Christmas.

A Santa Claus's. Noelle has to find her brother Nick, played by Bill Hader, when he runs off before Christmas. It was a Disney+ launch-day movie.

C Head of Santa's security. His character, Callum Drift, teams up with a hacker played by Chris Evans to find a kidnapped Santa (J.K. Simmons).

D Coco. Audiences grumbled about the long short before the feature, and Disney pulled it from theaters early.

D Elves who get houses ready for Santa. The Disney special first aired on ABC, and it was successful enough to get a sequel and a couple of shorts.

C Winnetka. The house at 671 Lincoln Avenue is a real private home, and fans still stop to take pictures out front.

C John Candy. Candy plays Gus Polinski, who drives Kate halfway across the country in a moving van with his band, the Kenosha Kickers.

D The Pledge of Allegiance. Everyone says amen anyway. Then Clark carves the turkey, which turns out to be badly overcooked.

D Elf. He plays Ming Ming, the head elf, in an uncredited cameo. He also worked behind the camera as one of the film's producers.

B Pottersville. Without George to stand in his way, Mr. Potter runs the town, and the main street is lined with bars and pawnshops.

C Natalie Wood. Wood was eight. Her character, Susan, has been raised by her practical mother to think Santa is just a story.

B Bob Newhart. Ed Asner plays Santa in the same movie.

C A passenger told him it helps after flying. The tip was to take off your shoes and socks and make fists with your toes on the carpet. The terrorists show up before he can put them back on.

B Film composer. His character, Miles, writes movie scores. Jude Law plays the book editor, Graham.

C Rosemary Clooney. Vera-Ellen plays her sister, Judy. Clooney was also George Clooney's aunt.

B Batman Returns. Tim Burton's 1992 sequel pits Batman against the Penguin and Catwoman, and a Christmas tree lighting goes very wrong.

D Cook. Her recipes come from a chef friend, and her farm, husband and baby are made up too, which becomes a problem when a war hero is invited for Christmas.

A An angel. His angel, Dudley, comes to help a stressed bishop played by David Niven. It was remade in 1996 as The Preacher's Wife with Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston.

D Kurt Russell. Goldie Hawn, Russell's longtime partner, shows up as Mrs. Claus.

D The Clausometer. When the reading drops too low the sleigh falls out of the sky, which is why the crowd in Central Park has to start singing.

B 25,000. Clark brags about 250 strands of 100 bulbs each. When they finally come on, the city has to switch to auxiliary power.

C Frank Shirley. Cousin Eddie kidnaps Mr. Shirley and brings him to the house, which is how Clark finally gets his bonus back.

D Hohman, Indiana. Hohman is based on Hammond, Indiana, where narrator and writer Jean Shepherd grew up.

C $8,000. Mr. Potter finds the cash and keeps it, which puts George on the bridge on Christmas Eve.

A The Greatest Gift. Philip Van Doren Stern couldn't find a publisher, so in 1943 he printed it himself and mailed it to friends as a Christmas card.

D Its copyright wasn't renewed. A clerical slip let the copyright lapse in 1974, so stations could air it for free. In 1993 Republic Pictures reasserted control through its rights to the original story and music, and the free-for-all ended.

B Edmund Gwenn. Gwenn won Best Supporting Actor, and he's still the only actor to win an Oscar for playing Santa Claus.

B David Krumholtz. Krumholtz later played the math genius Charlie Eppes on Numbers.

D July. It opened in July 1988, which is one reason people still argue every December about whether it counts as a Christmas movie.

C Love Is All Around. Bill Nighy's aging rocker turns the Troggs' Love Is All Around into Christmas Is All Around.

B Carol Kane. Kane was best known at the time for playing Simka on the sitcom Taxi.

A Touchstone Pictures. Disney later embraced it fully, and Haunted Mansion at Disneyland gets a Nightmare Before Christmas makeover every fall.

D Danny Elfman. Chris Sarandon does Jack's speaking voice. Elfman, who also wrote the songs, does the singing.

B Toy Story 4. It was Netflix's first original animated feature. Netflix actually had two nominees that year, since I Lost My Body was also up for the award.

D The S-1. Grandsanta's old wooden sleigh, pulled by real reindeer, saves the day when the S-1 misses a delivery.

B PG-13. Parents complained that both PG films were too intense for little kids, and the MPAA added PG-13 in 1984.

C Memphis. Founder Kemmons Wilson opened it in Memphis in 1952. His architect had jotted the movie's name on the plans as a joke, and it stuck.

D Jimmy Durante. It was one of Durante's final screen performances.

B Darren McGavin. McGavin was best known before this for the TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Melinda Dillon plays Ralphie's mother.

B VistaVision. Paramount developed VistaVision, which used twice the usual area of 35mm film for a sharper picture.

A John Williams. Williams got two Oscar nominations for it, one for the score and one for the song Somewhere in My Memory.