Christmas Trivia Questions and Answers

B Donald Trump. Trump owned the Plaza Hotel at the time the movie was filmed there.

D A pink bunny suit. His mother makes him model the footed pajamas for the whole family, and only his father takes pity on him.

B Maple syrup. He also piles on candy, marshmallows and crumbled Pop-Tarts.

B Scrooge McDuck. A natural fit, since Scrooge McDuck was named after Dickens's character. It was Mickey's first new theatrical cartoon in about 30 years.

D David Harbour. Harbour is best known as Hopper on Stranger Things. In this one, Santa takes on armed mercenaries.

A Gizmo. Billy's inventor father buys Gizmo in a Chinatown shop. Stripe is the mohawked gremlin who leads the others.

B Aftershave. That hands-on-cheeks scream is the pose on the movie poster.

D New York. He flies to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve to see his estranged wife, Holly, at her office Christmas party.

A Michael Jordan. Mannequins on strings fill out the rest of the crowd, and Harry and Marv decide the house is too busy to hit that night.

D Jim Carrey. Ron Howard directed it, and Carrey spent a long stretch in the makeup chair every shooting day for the green fur suit.

C With handwritten cue cards. A stereo playing carols is his cover story, so it looks like he's just out caroling.

A Randy Quaid. Quaid first played Eddie in the original Vacation (1983). In Christmas Vacation he shows up uninvited with his family in an RV.

B A squirrel. It was hiding in the replacement tree Clark cut down in his neighbors' yard, and it tears through the house before it's chased out.

C A sign says it has the world's best coffee. Buddy takes the sign at its word. The people inside barely look up.

D Linus. Network executives worried about putting scripture in a cartoon. Charles Schulz insisted it stay.

B Max tears up his letter to Santa. Krampus comes from Alpine folklore, where he punishes bad children while St. Nicholas rewards good ones.

A Will Ferrell. Ferrell plays the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Reynolds plays the man he's trying to reform. It came out on Apple TV+.

C Nakatomi Plaza. The real building is Fox Plaza in Century City, Los Angeles, which was still being finished when they filmed there.

D Heat Miser and Snow Miser. Their mother, Mother Nature, eventually gets them to work out a deal so it can snow in the South.

D George Michael. Emma Thompson co-wrote the story and the script, and also plays the mother. Emilia Clarke stars.

A Gingerbread. Buddy lists candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup. He means all four.

B Hugh Grant. Hugh Grant. His character dances through 10 Downing Street to the Pointer Sisters' Jump (For My Love).

D Sarah Jessica Parker. Diane Keaton plays the mother, and Claire Danes plays Meredith's sister, Julie.

A Duncan's Toy Chest. The owner, Mr. Duncan, plans to give the night's earnings to a children's hospital, which is why Kevin steps in.

A Coca-Cola. The special went on to win an Emmy and a Peabody Award.

B Alastair Sim. In the US it was released under the title A Christmas Carol.

D Gloria. The full refrain is Gloria in excelsis Deo, "Glory to God in the highest." The carol began in France.

B A Christmas tree. Tannenbaum means fir tree. The best-known version was written in 1824 and originally wasn't specifically about Christmas.

C Messiah. Messiah premiered in Dublin in 1742. It was first performed around Easter, not Christmas.

A Nat King Cole. Mel Tormé and Bob Wells wrote it during a hot summer in 1945. Cole recorded it several times, and his 1961 stereo version is the one you hear on the radio.

C Brenda Lee. She was 13 when she recorded it. In December 2023 it finally reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, 65 years later.

A Yoko Ono. The Harlem Community Choir sings on it. It grew out of the couple's 'War is over, if you want it' billboard campaign.

C Hawaii. It's Hawaiian for Merry Christmas. Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters recorded the song in 1950.

C Five gold rings. Five gold rings, the one line every group suddenly sings at full volume.

C Michael Bublé. Bublé is from Burnaby, British Columbia, and the album returns to the Billboard charts most Decembers.

B German. The original title is Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht. It has since been translated into hundreds of languages.

D Donny Hathaway. Hathaway wrote it with Nadine McKinnor, and his version is still the one most radio stations play.

D Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow wrote it on Christmas Day 1863, a few weeks after his son Charles was badly wounded fighting for the Union.

D African American spirituals. John Wesley Work Jr., a Nashville scholar connected to the Fisk Jubilee Singers, collected and published it in the early 1900s.

A Meet Me in St. Louis. Garland sang it to a heartbroken Margaret O'Brien. The writers softened the original lyrics after Garland said they were too sad.

C Greensleeves. William Chatterton Dix wrote the words in 1865. Greensleeves goes back to the 1500s.

C David Letterman's show. It started on Letterman's NBC show and moved with him to CBS. The song first appeared on Phil Spector's 1963 album A Christmas Gift for You.

C Martin Luther. The words first appeared, unsigned, in an 1885 Philadelphia Lutheran songbook, and an 1887 songbook labeled it Luther's Cradle Hymn. Historians have found no link to Luther.

C Massachusetts. Edmund Sears was a Unitarian pastor in Wayland, Massachusetts. Richard Storrs Willis wrote the tune most Americans sing a year later.

A World War I. It was unofficial and mostly along the Western Front. Some soldiers reported kicking a ball around in no man's land.

A Valentine's Day. Christmas is far ahead of everything else, with well over a billion cards a year.

C A Yankee swap. Same rules: open a gift or steal one. In much of the South the game goes by Dirty Santa.

A January 6. The word comes from the Greek for appearance. Many US Catholic parishes mark it on the nearest Sunday instead.

D Four. Advent starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, which is why most Advent wreaths have four candles.

D Evergreen branches. Evergreens stay green all winter, and the circle with no end is often read as a symbol of eternal life.

D Touch it. Touching is said to drain its magic. Kids are actually encouraged to name it and talk to it.

A Boxing Day. The name is usually traced to the Christmas boxes of money or gifts once given to servants and tradespeople. In Ireland it's St. Stephen's Day.

B Who is giving you your gift. Everyone draws a name and shops for that one person. The big reveal usually comes when the gifts are opened.

B The Friday before. When Christmas lands on a Sunday, the day off moves to Monday instead.

A Most Germans have never heard of it. Its origins are murky, and the German story may be a marketing invention. Berrien Springs, Michigan, has called itself the Christmas Pickle Capital of the World.

D Real silver. Silver tarnished fast. Later tinsel used lead, which US makers stopped producing in the early 1970s over safety concerns.

A Ulysses S. Grant. The law gave federal workers in Washington, DC, the day off, along with New Year's Day, Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

A Hallmark. The envelope paper sold out, so the Hall brothers started printing their own designs. Hallmark has been selling wrapping paper ever since.

A The first US minister to Mexico. Poinsett sent cuttings back to the US in the late 1820s. In Mexico the plant is called flor de Nochebuena.

D Leaves called bracts. The actual flowers are the tiny yellow clusters in the middle. The bracts turn red after the plant gets weeks of long nights in the fall.

D Dyed goose feathers. Feather trees were wire branches wrapped in green-dyed feathers. They're collectible now, and reproductions are still sold.

D Oregon. Oregon grows mostly Douglas and noble firs. North Carolina, famous for its Fraser firs, is usually second.

D Glühwein. It's mulled red wine. You pay a deposit on the mug and get it back if you return it, or keep the mug.

B Cinnamon. It's often made from tablets of chocolate already mixed with sugar and cinnamon, then frothed with a wooden whisk called a molinillo.

C Cinnamon sugar. Cream of tartar gives them their slight tang and soft, chewy middle.

D Christmas Eve. It grew out of the Catholic custom of skipping meat on the vigil before a feast day. Nobody agrees on why it's seven.

A Jam. They're named for Linz, Austria, home of the Linzer torte, and they're usually dusted with powdered sugar.

A A prize turkey. The Cratchits had been planning on a small goose. The turkey is so big that Scrooge pays for a cab to deliver it.

D Chex. The coating is melted chocolate and peanut butter, and the whole batch gets shaken in a bag of powdered sugar.

C Spritz. The name comes from the German spritzen, to squirt. They're a big deal in Scandinavian-American kitchens in the Upper Midwest.

C Pizzelle. They come from the Abruzzo region and are a fixture on Italian-American cookie trays. Anise is the classic flavor.

A Ohio. They're made to look like the nut of the buckeye tree, Ohio's state tree and the nickname for Ohio State fans.

A Johnny Carson. The joke stuck. Manitou Springs, Colorado, even holds an annual Great Fruitcake Toss in January.

C To keep children quiet during a long service. It's a nice story, but historians haven't found any mention of it before the 20th century.

A Sponge cake with cream and strawberries. Red strawberries on white cream look festive, and bakeries take preorders for weeks.

A Mary See, the founder's mother. Charles See opened the first shop in Los Angeles in 1921. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway bought the company in 1972.

D Tom and Jerry. Upper Midwest supermarkets sell the batter by the tub in December. The drink is much older than the cartoon cat and mouse.

C Christmas Eve. December 24 is Heiligabend, Holy Evening. Many families go to church in the late afternoon and open gifts that evening.

D Philippines. Filipinos call September through December the "Ber months," and the season runs into January.

A Broadcast a Christmas message. King George V gave the first one by radio in 1932, from a script written by Rudyard Kipling. It was first televised in 1957.

B To the sauna. The Christmas sauna is a quiet family ritual. Many families also light candles on relatives' graves that day.

D Scandinavia. Swedes and Norwegians write God Jul, and Danes write Glædelig Jul. Jul is related to the English word Yule.

A Books. It's called Jólabókaflóð, the Christmas book flood, and a big share of Iceland's new books come out in the fall to meet it.

D A nativity scene. Many families leave the manger empty until Christmas Eve, then lay the baby Jesus figure in it, often with a lullaby.

C A carrot or some hay for his horse. In the morning the carrot is gone and there's candy or a small gift in its place.

B La Befana. She's an old woman on a broom who fills stockings with candy, or coal for bad kids, the night before Epiphany.

C Help after the 1917 Halifax Explosion. A relief train from Boston reached Halifax within days of the disaster. The annual gift started in 1971, and the tree now stands on Boston Common.

C Réveillon. The name comes from the French word for waking, since the meal traditionally ran late into the night.

D A parranda. The hosts are expected to let everyone in and feed them, and the group often picks up the hosts and moves on to the next house until dawn.

B It blooms bright red in December. Christmas falls in early summer there, right when the coastal trees are covered in crimson flowers.

C Spider webs. In the story, a poor family wakes on Christmas morning to find spiders have covered their bare tree in webs that shine silver in the sunlight.

C Women's Christmas. Traditionally the men took over the housework that day while women went out to celebrate, a custom that's still strong in Cork and Kerry.

B The stockings. He speaks not a word, fills all the stockings, and is gone with a nod.

B Papai Noel. Papai means daddy. In Portugal, he's Pai Natal instead.

D Children. He's also a patron of sailors, merchants, brewers and students.

C Google. It later partnered with NORAD for several years, and it still runs its own tracker with games for kids every December.

A Fur, from head to foot. The poem never says he wore red. The red suit became standard later.

C A bundle of toys. The poem says he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

A Rudolph. He came from a department store giveaway booklet, and the 1949 song turned him into a superstar.

D Mouse. The poem's real title is A Visit from St. Nicholas, but almost everyone knows it by its first line.

C A lump of coal. Coal was cheap and every house had it, which made it the obvious threat.

A Alaska. North Pole is just outside Fairbanks, and its streetlights are painted like candy canes.

A The New York Sun. Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote in to ask. Editor Francis Pharcellus Church answered, unsigned.

A Rovaniemi. Santa Claus Village there has its own post office that receives letters from all over the world.

A Happy. Plenty of people remember it as Merry Christmas, but the 1823 text ends with Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

A The females. Females keep theirs until after their calves are born, which has led plenty of people to argue Santa's team is mostly female.

D Der Weihnachtsmann. The name means Christmas man. In some regions, especially in the south, the Christkind brings the presents instead.

A Ježíšek, the baby Jesus. Kids don't see him. A bell rings on Christmas Eve to tell them he's been, and the presents are waiting under the tree.

A New York. Howard started it in Albion, New York, and played Santa in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for years. The school now runs in Midland, Michigan.

A Katharine Lee Bates. Bates is better known for writing the words to America the Beautiful.

B A star. Matthew 2:9 says the star went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was.

C God with us. Matthew 1:23. "The Lord saves" is close to the meaning of the name Jesus itself.

D Carpenter. Matthew 13:55 calls Jesus "the carpenter's son." The Greek word, tekton, can mean a builder or craftsman who worked with wood or stone.

C All the people. Luke 2:10. The King James Version calls it good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

D From the east. Matthew 2:1 says only "from the east." Persia and Babylon are common guesses, but the text doesn't say.

C Dried resins from trees. Both come from trees in Arabia and the Horn of Africa. Myrrh shows up again at Jesus's burial in John 19:39.

A She was Mary's relative. Luke 1:36 just says "relative." The King James Version translates it "cousin," but the exact relationship isn't given.

A John. Only Matthew and Luke tell the Christmas story. Mark starts with John the Baptist as an adult, and John goes back to the beginning of creation.

A He was unable to speak. Luke 1:20. He stayed silent until his son was born and named.

A Abraham. Matthew 1:2. Luke's genealogy in Luke 3 runs the other way and goes all the way back to Adam.