Christmas Song Trivia

A Twelve drummers drumming. Drummers come last. Pipers are eleventh and the lords are leaping on day ten.

D Jingle Bell Rock. When the boombox gets knocked over and the music stops, Cady starts singing it herself and the whole gym joins in.

C Bing Crosby. The version on most radios today is a 1947 re-recording, made because the original master had worn out from heavy use.

A The First Noel. The First Noel is an old English carol, first printed in the 1820s, though it was probably sung long before that.

B The newborn baby Jesus. Having no gift to bring, he plays his drum instead. Katherine Kennicott Davis wrote the song in 1941.

A Paul McCartney. McCartney made it as a solo record, and it has been a December radio regular ever since.

C Figgy pudding. The carolers refuse to leave until they get some. Figgy pudding is a steamed English pudding, closer to a dense cake than the American kind.

B Stand up. The popular story says King George II stood at an early London performance, so everyone else had to. There's no solid evidence he was even there.

D Ariana Grande. It climbs back onto the charts most Decembers.

A Kelly Clarkson. Clarkson co-wrote it with producer Greg Kurstin for her album Wrapped in Red.

A Her childhood on a tree farm. Swift spent part of her childhood on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania.

A Chuck Berry. Berry released it at the end of 1958, the same year as Johnny B. Goode, and the two songs sound a lot alike.

B Pentatonix. The group got its start on NBC's The Sing-Off, which it won in 2011.

B Bruce Springsteen. It was recorded on December 12, 1975, at a concert at C.W. Post College on Long Island, and first came out on a record in 1981.

C Irving Berlin. Berlin, who also wrote God Bless America, wrote it for a movie musical. Guinness lists the hit recording as the best-selling single of all time.

C 1994. It came out on her album Merry Christmas in 1994 and climbs back up the charts every December.

B Band Aid. Band Aid was put together by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure. Live Aid was the concert that followed in 1985.

C O Come, All Ye Faithful. Adeste Fideles means roughly "Be present, faithful ones." The English version most people sing was translated by Frederick Oakeley in the 1840s.

D Gene Autry. Autry's record reached No. 1 in the first week of January 1950. He nearly passed on the song until his wife, Ina, talked him into it.

A 1984. That same December a charity single kept it out of the UK's No. 1 spot. George Michael sang on both records.

C Austria. It debuted in the village of Oberndorf, near Salzburg. Joseph Mohr wrote the words and Franz Xaver Gruber wrote the music, arranged for guitar.

A Giselle. The carol started as a French poem, Minuit, chrétiens, by a wine merchant named Placide Cappeau.

C Wales. It's an old Welsh tune called Nos Galan, which was sung on New Year's Eve. The English Christmas words came later.

C A psalm. Watts based it on Psalm 98, and the lyrics are actually about Christ's second coming rather than the nativity.

B The Feast of Stephen. St. Stephen's Day is December 26. The real Wenceslas was a 10th-century duke of Bohemia, not a king.

B Ukraine. Mykola Leontovych arranged it as Shchedryk, a New Year's song about a swallow. Peter Wilhousky wrote the English Christmas lyrics in 1936.

D Thanksgiving. Lydia Maria Child published it in 1844 as a Thanksgiving poem. Plenty of people now sing it at Christmas.

C Bobby Helms. Helms was a country singer, and Jingle Bell Rock became his best-known record by far.

D Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Ives voiced Sam the Snowman, the special's narrator, and his recording of the song became a standard.

D Andy Williams. It was on The Andy Williams Christmas Album, and his Christmas TV specials made the song a fixture.

D Eartha Kitt. Kitt later played Catwoman on the 1960s Batman TV series.

D Elmo & Patsy. Randy Brooks wrote it. Elmo & Patsy first released it in 1979 and it built into a hit over the next few years.

B The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late). David Seville was Ross Bagdasarian, who sped up his own voice to create the Chipmunks. The song won three awards at the very first Grammys.

B Die Hard. Argyle the limo driver plays it while picking John McClane up from the airport. The song first came out on the 1987 charity album A Very Special Christmas.

C 2019. That was then the longest climb to No. 1 in the chart's history, and the song has returned to the top in later holiday seasons.

C Carol of the Bells. It also weaves in God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. The track first appeared on a 1995 album by the metal band Savatage, whose members went on to form Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

B Queen of Christmas. Singers Darlene Love and Elizabeth Chan objected, and the trademark was denied.

A The Pogues. Shane MacGowan sings the other half of the duet. It's one of the most played Christmas songs in Britain and Ireland.

D Christmas. Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne wrote it during a July heat wave in Hollywood in 1945. It's a winter song, not a holiday one.

B His wife, at parties. He and his wife, Lynn Garland, first sang it at their own housewarming in 1944. It later won an Oscar after appearing in the 1949 film Neptune's Daughter.

A Gene Autry. Songwriters Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote it after Autry's Rudolph became a smash, and he recorded it with the Cass County Boys.

B The One Horse Open Sleigh. James Lord Pierpont wrote it. A popular legend says it was written for Thanksgiving, but historians haven't found evidence to back that up.

D Jingle Bells. The Gemini 6 astronauts jokingly reported a UFO piloted by someone in a red suit, then played Jingle Bells on a harmonica and sleigh bells they had smuggled aboard.

D Hark how all the welkin rings. "Welkin" is an old word for the sky. Preacher George Whitefield changed the line to the version we sing now.

A Felix Mendelssohn. It came from a cantata Mendelssohn wrote in 1840 to honor Gutenberg and the printing press. An English musician later matched it to Wesley's words.

D 364. Gifts repeat each day, so day twelve alone brings 78. One short of a gift for every day of the year.

D A blackbird. Colly is an old English word for coal black. The lyric shifted to 'calling' once nobody remembered what it meant.

B Celesta. Tchaikovsky found the celesta in Paris and asked his publisher to keep it quiet so no rival Russian composer would use it first.

B Oldest artist to top the Hot 100. She was 78. The record also had the longest gap ever between release and reaching No. 1.

A A Hollywood Christmas parade. He heard children shouting "Here comes Santa Claus!" as Santa rode behind him in the Santa Claus Lane Parade on Hollywood Boulevard.

D Tinkle Bells. Jay Livingston's wife explained what 'tinkle' meant to most people. Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell sang it in The Lemon Drop Kid (1951).

A David Bowie. Bowie sang a new counter-melody, Peace on Earth. Crosby died about a month after taping it, before the special aired.

B Walter Afanasieff. Afanasieff co-wrote and co-produced it. The two also wrote her 1993 ballad Hero together.

C Diamond. Diamond means 10 million units in the US, counting sales and streams. The certification came in December 2021.

B New Year's Day 2021. George Michael died on Christmas Day 2016, which brought a new wave of interest in the song.

C Roy Orbison. Nelson recorded his own version later and used it as the title of a 1979 Christmas album.