Christmas Trivia for Kids

A Milk and cookies. Milk and cookies. Lots of kids leave a carrot out for the reindeer too.

A Down the chimney. The chimney idea got famous from the 1823 poem 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

A A glowing red nose. His shiny nose turns out to be exactly what Santa needs on a foggy night.

C The North Pole. Most stories put him at the North Pole. Finland says he lives in Lapland, so it depends who you ask.

A Stockings. Santa fills them with small treats. A tangerine or orange in the toe is an old tradition.

D J. Turn it upside down and it looks like a shepherd's crook, the hooked staff shepherds used.

D A star or an angel. The star stands for the one that led the wise men to baby Jesus. Some families use an angel instead.

D A carrot. Coal or pebbles usually make the eyes and the buttons.

A A partridge. A partridge is a plump bird that usually lives on the ground, so a tree is a funny place to find one.

D Penguin. Wild penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere, mostly around Antarctica, on the opposite end of the Earth.

B White. White fur helps it hide in the snow. In summer it turns brown or gray to match the rocks.

D Comet. Comets are big chunks of ice and dust. When they get close to the sun, they grow a bright tail.

B Cupid. Cupid comes from Roman stories, where he made people fall in love with his arrows.

D Nine. Rudolph usually flies at the front of the team, where his nose does the most good.

C Six. Water molecules lock together in a six-sided pattern when they freeze, so snowflakes come out six-sided.

D Jelly. The poem says that when he laughed, his belly shook like a bowl full of jelly.

B The reindeer. Then Santa comes down the chimney with toys, starting with little Nell's stocking.

D Boughs of holly. A bough is a branch. Holly stays green all winter, which is why people decorated with it.

D A fox. The fox offers him a ride across the river, and that's the end of the Gingerbread Man.

D Sven. Kristoff likes to talk for Sven in a goofy voice. Olaf is the snowman, Hans is the sneaky prince, and Oaken runs the trading post.

A Ballet. Ballet companies all over the US perform it every December, often with local kids as mice and soldiers.

A Cracks open nuts. The wooden soldier kind comes from Germany. You put a nut in his mouth and push the lever on his back to crack it.

A The North Pole. The boy rides it on Christmas Eve and meets Santa when he gets there.

D Hot chocolate. They even sing a whole song about it while flipping cups through the air.

B It grows three sizes. Dr. Seuss says his heart was two sizes too small to begin with.

A Whoville. Dr. Seuss wrote the book in 1957. The Grinch lives up on a mountain looking down on Whoville.

A A magic hat. When the hat blows off, Frosty is just a regular snowman again.

B Misfit toys. A spotted elephant and a train with square wheels live there. Santa promises to find them all homes.

A Bah! Humbug!. Humbug means nonsense. By the end of the story, after three ghosts visit, Scrooge loves Christmas.

A The North Pole. Buddy is a human who grew up with elves, which is why he's so much taller than everyone at work.

C New York City. He walks the whole way from the North Pole and enters the city through the Lincoln Tunnel.

B A cheese pizza. He orders a cheese pizza all for himself from Little Nero's.

B Mickey Mouse. Goofy plays the ghost of Jacob Marley, and Jiminy Cricket is the Ghost of Christmas Past.

A Eight. One more candle is lit each night on a menorah, which holds nine: eight plus a helper candle.

C Merry Christmas. It's Spanish. Navidad comes from the same Latin root as the word nativity.

C Joyeux Noël. Buon Natale is Italian, Frohe Weihnachten is German and God Jul is Swedish.

A They stay green all winter. When other trees lost their leaves, evergreens stayed green, so they became a symbol of life in winter.

A Elves. Santa's elves showed up in American stories and magazines in the 1800s and have been busy ever since.

B Mrs. Claus. Writers have given her different first names over the years. In The Santa Clause 2 she's a school principal named Carol.

D A calf. Reindeer calves can stand up within about an hour of being born.

D Both boys and girls. Reindeer are the only kind of deer where the females grow antlers too.

C Lichen. Lichen is sometimes called reindeer moss. Reindeer sniff it out and dig through the snow to reach it.

D Caribou. Caribou and reindeer are the same species. 'Reindeer' usually means the ones people have tamed.

A They change color. Scientists found reindeer eyes are golden in summer and turn blue in the dark Arctic winter, which helps them see in dim light.

C Clicking. The click comes from a tendon slipping over a bone as they walk. Scientists think it may help the herd keep track of each other.

B Yes, they're good swimmers. Their hollow hairs trap air and help them float, so herds can cross wide rivers.

B Black. Black skin soaks up heat from the sun. Their fur isn't really white either, since each hair is clear.

D A female fox. A male fox is called a tod or a dog, and a baby fox is a kit.

A An ocean covered in ice. There's no land at the North Pole. It sits on floating sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

C Visions of sugarplums. Sugarplums were little hard candies made by coating a seed or nut in layers of sugar. There's no plum in them.

C The Mouse King. In some versions he has seven heads. The Nutcracker wins with a little help from Clara.

B One antler. One antler is supposed to make Max a reindeer. Max isn't very convinced.

A Cindy-Lou Who. The Grinch tells her he's taking the tree to fix a light, and she believes him.

C Bumble. Once his teeth are pulled, he turns out to be friendly and helps decorate the tree.

C Decorating his doghouse. Snoopy covers his doghouse in lights and wins the neighborhood decorating contest.

B Holiday traditions for Anna and Elsa. It turns out the sisters' tradition was Olaf himself: Anna had made Olaf gifts for Elsa every Christmas.

D He puts on Santa's coat. Santa falls off his roof, and the card in the coat says whoever puts it on takes over the job.

D Santa's youngest son. Arthur works in the letters department and sets out to deliver one forgotten present.

C Zero. Zero's glowing pumpkin nose lights the way for Jack's sleigh through the fog, a lot like a certain reindeer.

D A dreidel. Each of its four sides has a Hebrew letter that tells you to take nothing, take everything, take half or put one in.

C Seven. It runs from December 26 to January 1, with one principle celebrated each day.

B It has the shortest daylight of the year. After the solstice, around December 21, the days start getting longer again in the US.

A Rockefeller Center. The tree has been put up there every year since 1933, and the star on top is covered in about 3 million crystals.

B Icing. Thick icing made with egg whites and powdered sugar dries hard, almost like cement.

C Tinsel. Tinsel shimmers when light hits it, so it looks like icicles catching the sun.