Christmas traditions and history — round one of your printable quiz
Start with the classics: where the holiday's best-known customs actually come from — decorated trees, mistletoe, Advent, and the real Saint Nicholas. Grandparents tend to dominate this round, so spread them across teams.
Two answers deserve a sentence from the host. The decorated indoor tree is German, and older than most people assume: the Brotherhood of Blackheads recorded trees in Tallinn and Riga in the 1440s and 1510s, and a Bremen guild chronicle of 1570 describes one decorated for guild members' children. That Martin Luther fixed the first candles to a tree is legend. Mistletoe is the other: the kissing custom appears in English sources in the 1780s, with a rule since dropped that a berry was plucked at every kiss and the kissing stopped when the berries ran out.
Q1.Which country is credited with starting the modern tradition of decorating a Christmas tree at home?Tap to reveal
Answer: Germany
Sixteenth-century German Christians brought evergreens indoors and decorated them, and the custom spread across Europe from there.
Q2.Who wrote the 1843 novella "A Christmas Carol"?Tap to reveal
Answer: Charles Dickens
Dickens wrote it in about six weeks, and it has never been out of print.
Q3.Besides Jacob Marley, how many spirits visit Ebenezer Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol"?Tap to reveal
Answer: Three — the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come
Marley's ghost arrives first to warn Scrooge the three spirits are coming.
Q4.Under which plant do people traditionally kiss at Christmas?Tap to reveal
Answer: Mistletoe
The kissing custom became popular in England in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Q5.Saint Nicholas, the inspiration for Santa Claus, was a bishop of Myra — in which modern-day country is Myra located?Tap to reveal
Answer: Turkey
Myra was a town in Lycia, Asia Minor, near today's Demre on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.
Q6.If you received every gift in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas," how many gifts would you have in total?Tap to reveal
Answer: 364
Each gift repeats on every following day, so the totals stack up to 364 across the twelve days.
Q7.Which artist's Coca-Cola ads, starting in 1931, helped standardize the image of a plump, red-suited Santa Claus?Tap to reveal
Answer: Haddon Sundblom
Santa had appeared in many forms before; Sundblom's ads cemented the modern look.
Q8.What is the name of the season of preparation observed on the four Sundays before Christmas?Tap to reveal
Answer: Advent
The word comes from the Latin adventus, meaning "arrival" or "coming."
Q9.In what year did Christmas become a federal holiday in the United States?Tap to reveal
Answer: 1870
President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill making Christmas a federal holiday.
Q10.In the abbreviation "Xmas," the X stands for a letter from which alphabet?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Greek alphabet
X is the Greek letter chi, the first letter of "Christos" — so Xmas is an old abbreviation, not a modern shortcut.
Christmas movies and songs — the crowd-pleaser round
Everyone has seen at least three of these films, which makes this the loudest round. Print it double-spaced so teams can scribble answers next to each question.
The song answers reward a host who knows the small print. Guinness World Records treats Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" as the best-selling single of all time on physical sales, above an estimated 50 million copies, while listing Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997" as the best seller since the UK and US charts began, so anyone who objects is half right. The recording everyone knows is not the original either: Crosby cut it again on 19 March 1947, the 1942 master having worn out. And Mariah Carey's 1994 single took until 21 December 2019 to top the Billboard Hot 100, the slowest climb in that chart's history.
Q1.In "Home Alone," which city is the McCallister family flying to when they leave Kevin behind?Tap to reveal
Answer: Paris
The family only realizes Kevin is missing mid-flight over the Atlantic.
Q2.What gift does Ralphie desperately want in "A Christmas Story"?Tap to reveal
Answer: A Red Ryder BB gun
Every adult in the movie warns him: "You'll shoot your eye out!"
Q3.In "Elf," what is the name of Buddy's biological father, played by James Caan?Tap to reveal
Answer: Walter Hobbs
Walter is a children's book publisher in New York — and starts the movie on the naughty list.
Q4.What is the name of the angel trying to earn his wings in "It's a Wonderful Life"?Tap to reveal
Answer: Clarence
Clarence Odbody, Angel Second Class, gets his wings when a bell rings at the end.
Q5."Miracle on 34th Street" centers on the Santa Claus of which famous New York department store?Tap to reveal
Answer: Macy's
Kris Kringle is hired as the Santa for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and its flagship store.
Q6.Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 as a promotional character for which American retailer?Tap to reveal
Answer: Montgomery Ward
Copywriter Robert L. May invented Rudolph for a giveaway coloring booklet.
Q7.How many reindeer pull Santa's sleigh in the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas"?Tap to reveal
Answer: Eight
Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen — Rudolph came more than a century later.
Q8.Which Christmas song, recorded by Bing Crosby, is the best-selling single of all time?Tap to reveal
Answer: "White Christmas"
Written by Irving Berlin, it has sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide.
Q9."Jingle Bells" was originally written for which holiday?Tap to reveal
Answer: Thanksgiving
James Lord Pierpont's 1857 song was first titled "One Horse Open Sleigh" and had no Christmas lyrics at all.
Q10.Which 1994 Mariah Carey song climbs back up the charts every December?Tap to reveal
Answer: "All I Want for Christmas Is You"
It finally hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2019 — 25 years after its release.
Q11.In "Die Hard," what is the name of the Los Angeles skyscraper where the Christmas party is held?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nakatomi Plaza
The exterior is the real Fox Plaza in Century City — and yes, this question settles the "is it a Christmas movie" argument at every party.
Christmas around the world — the round nobody sweeps
This is the great equaliser: even the trivia-champion uncle rarely has all thirteen Yule Lads. These questions travel from Japan to Iceland to Mexico and are the best of the set to read aloud.
Two are worth expanding on the reveal. Iceland's Yule Lads arrive one a night from 12 December and leave one a night through to 6 January; children put a shoe on the windowsill and find a small gift, or a rotten potato. Thirteen was not always the number — regional accounts varied, and the modern line-up was fixed by Jóhannes úr Kötlum's 1932 poem. The 7 January answer needs a footnote too: that is 25 December on the Julian calendar, which currently runs thirteen days behind, rather than a different feast. Orthodox churches on the revised calendar keep Christmas with the West.
Q1.In which country has a bucket of KFC fried chicken become a popular Christmas meal?Tap to reveal
Answer: Japan
A 1970s "Kentucky for Christmas" marketing campaign turned it into a national tradition — many families order weeks in advance.
Q2.In Italian folklore, which friendly witch delivers gifts to children on the eve of Epiphany?Tap to reveal
Answer: La Befana
She flies on a broomstick on the night of January 5, filling stockings with sweets — or coal for the naughty.
Q3.How many Yule Lads visit children over the thirteen nights before Christmas in Icelandic tradition?Tap to reveal
Answer: Thirteen
Each has a distinct personality, like Spoon-Licker and Door-Slammer, and leaves small gifts in children's shoes.
Q4.In Ukraine, Christmas trees are sometimes decorated with ornaments of which creature, thanks to a folk tale about a poor family?Tap to reveal
Answer: A spider and its web
In the tale, spiders decorate a poor family's tree overnight and the webs turn to silver and gold — so spider ornaments mean good luck.
Q5.What is the name of the nine-night Mexican celebration that reenacts Mary and Joseph's search for lodging?Tap to reveal
Answer: Las Posadas
"Posada" means "inn" or "lodging"; processions run each night from December 16 to 24.
Q6."Feliz Navidad" means "Merry Christmas" in which language?Tap to reveal
Answer: Spanish
José Feliciano's 1970 bilingual song made the phrase famous far beyond the Spanish-speaking world.
Q7.In Alpine folklore, which horned companion of St. Nicholas punishes badly behaved children in early December?Tap to reveal
Answer: Krampus
Krampus Night (Krampusnacht) is still marked on December 5 in parts of Austria and Bavaria with costumed parades.
Q8.Many Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas on which date?Tap to reveal
Answer: January 7
They follow the Julian calendar for feast days, which currently runs 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar.
Q9.In which season does Christmas Day fall in Australia?Tap to reveal
Answer: Summer
December is midsummer in the Southern Hemisphere, so beach cricket and barbecues replace snow.
Q10.What is the German word for the traditional outdoor Christmas market?Tap to reveal
Answer: Weihnachtsmarkt
Some German Christmas markets, like Dresden's Striezelmarkt, date back to the 15th century.
Christmas food and treats — the tastiest round to print
Finish with food. These questions pair with dessert — read them out while the pudding is on the table. If you saved the page as a PDF, this round sits on the last sheet.
The mince pie answer starts arguments, so have the detail ready: early fillings ran to beef, mutton, tripe, neat's tongue and sometimes fish, and the meat faded out of recipes over the centuries while the name stayed. The pudding question carries a myth of its own: the thirteen ingredients standing for Christ and the apostles, and the stirring from east to west for the Magi, are later inventions, and plum pudding recipes appear mainly from the seventeenth century. Stir-up Sunday, the fifth Sunday before Christmas, takes its name from the prayer book collect beginning "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord."
Q1.Which British dessert is traditionally doused in brandy and set alight before serving?Tap to reveal
Answer: Christmas pudding
Also called plum pudding, it's traditionally made weeks ahead on "Stir-up Sunday" so the flavors mature.
Q2.What were mince pies originally filled with?Tap to reveal
Answer: Actual minced meat, mixed with fruit and spices
The meat gradually disappeared from recipes; the name "mincemeat" stuck for the all-fruit filling.
Q3.Panettone, the tall, dome-shaped Christmas sweet bread, comes from which country?Tap to reveal
Answer: Italy
It originated in Milan and is traditionally studded with candied fruit and raisins.
Q4.The French bûche de Noël is a cake made to look like what?Tap to reveal
Answer: A Yule log
It's a rolled sponge cake frosted to resemble bark, honoring the old custom of burning a Yule log at Christmas.
Q5.Which fairy tale is credited with popularizing decorated gingerbread houses?Tap to reveal
Answer: "Hansel and Gretel"
After the Brothers Grimm published the tale of a witch's edible house, German bakers began crafting gingerbread versions.
Q6.The red parts of a poinsettia are not flower petals — what are they?Tap to reveal
Answer: Modified leaves called bracts
The actual flowers are the tiny yellow structures at the center of the red bracts.
Q7.The poinsettia plant is native to which country?Tap to reveal
Answer: Mexico
It's named after Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first US minister to Mexico, who sent cuttings home in the 1820s.
Q8.What three gifts did the Magi bring to the infant Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew?Tap to reveal
Answer: Gold, frankincense, and myrrh
The Bible names three gifts but never says how many wise men there were.
Q9.Frankincense and myrrh are both harvested from what?Tap to reveal
Answer: Tree resin
Both are dried sap tapped from trees of the Burseraceae family, prized for incense and perfume since antiquity.
How to run the printed quiz — teams, timing and scoring
Print one copy for yourself and read the questions aloud; the sheet prints with the answers attached, so blank paper and a pen per team is all the players need.
Teams of three or four beat individuals in almost every setting: solo play keeps quiet people quiet, whereas a team of three argues its way to an answer, and above a dozen people teams stop being optional. Read each question twice, then give 20 to 30 seconds; at that pace all 40 run to about three quarters of an hour and a single round takes twelve to fifteen minutes. Score a point an answer and refuse half marks, which turn a quiz into a negotiation. Have teams swap sheets and mark each other's while you read the answers out.
For mixed ages, put one child on each team rather than a children's team that loses by twenty points; round two is where younger players earn their keep, so let the youngest answer first. If time runs short, drop whole rounds rather than picking questions out of the middle: rounds one and two together are 21 questions and about 25 minutes, the right length for a game before dinner.
The questions people get wrong, and the two to hold back as a tiebreak
The questions that stall a room are not the obscure ones but the ones where the familiar answer is nearly right. The twelve days total catches people out because 78 is what you get counting each gift once; the gifts repeat every day, which is how the total reaches 364. Expect Greece as often as Turkey on the Saint Nicholas question: he was a Greek-speaking bishop, and Myra sat in Lycia, near modern Demre.
The Rudolph question separates people who know the song from people who know the story. Robert L. May wrote Rudolph in 1939 as an assignment for Montgomery Ward, which gave away 2.4 million copies of the booklet that first year. May considered Rollo and Reginald, and management had to be talked round because in the 1930s a bright red nose read as drunkenness. The song came a decade later, from May's brother-in-law Johnny Marks, and Gene Autry's recording topped the chart at Christmas 1949. The eight reindeer of the 1823 poem do not include Rudolph, and the seventh is spelled Donder or Donner depending on the source — accept either.
Every quiz needs a tiebreak, and numeric answers make the best ones, since closest-wins resolves without a judgement call. Pull the twelve days question out of round one and keep it back for that, and hold the poinsettia question as a second: the red parts being modified leaves called bracts either sits in someone's head or does not. Asking two at the end rather than inside the rounds still leaves you with all 40.
Where the popular Christmas story is wrong
Christmas attracts more confident misinformation than any other holiday, largely because the false versions are charming. Coca-Cola did not invent the red suit. Thomas Nast was drawing Santa for Harper's Weekly from 1863, red-and-white Santas appeared on covers of Puck in the early 1900s, and White Rock Beverages used a Santa in advertising from 1915 and in colour from 1923; Haddon Sundblom's campaign, which began in 1931, standardised an image that already existed. Prince Albert is a similar case: Queen Charlotte had a decorated tree at a children's party in 1800, and it was the Illustrated London News engraving of 1848, showing the royal family around theirs, that turned the tree into a national habit. Albert popularised it; he did not bring it.
Two answers here come with a caveat worth saying out loud. "Jingle Bells" is the standard quiz answer for a song written for Thanksgiving, and it is the answer printed here, but the evidence is thin. What is documented is that James Lord Pierpont published it as "The One Horse Open Sleigh" and copyrighted it on 16 September 1857; where and when he wrote it is unsettled, with a Medford plaque claiming 1850 and the researcher Kyna Hamill arguing for Boston. The date of Christmas is the other. The Chronograph of 354, the earliest document placing the Nativity on 25 December, also names that day as the birthday of Sol Invictus, whose festival dates from AD 274; a rival explanation counts nine months on from the Annunciation on 25 March. Historians have not settled it, and Saturnalia ran from 17 to 23 December, never reaching the 25th.
Several more are simply false. Xmas does not take Christ out of Christmas: the X is the Greek letter chi, the first letter of Christos, attested in English at the Oxford English Dictionary's 1721 citation and, as "Xp̄es mæsse", in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle around 1100. The twelve days of Christmas was not a coded catechism for persecuted Catholics; nothing in the list separates Catholic from Protestant belief, and the earliest known printing is a London children's book of 1780. Poinsettias are not deadly either: a review of more than 20,000 calls to American poison control centres between 1985 and 1992 recorded no deaths, and the line about one leaf killing a child traces to a mistaken official statement in 1970. Nor are mince pies illegal on Christmas Day in England; the 1647 ban was on the celebration, not on any food.
One correction matters more than the rest: the belief that suicides peak at Christmas is false, and it is repeated every December by people who mean well. Analysis of United States mortality data by the Annenberg Public Policy Center puts December among the lowest months for the average daily rate, with the higher months in spring and summer.
Adapting the sheet for a family table, an office, a classroom or a video call
At a family table, run one round per course rather than one long game: traditions with the starter, films with the main, the world round with pudding, food with the coffee. It stops the quiz competing with the meal. Round one rewards whoever has been doing Christmas longest and round two whoever watched Home Alone most recently, so mix generations on every team.
At a work party, cap the whole thing at 25 minutes and pick two rounds. Rounds two and three travel best across a mixed workforce, since films and geography ask nothing about anyone's beliefs. Make teams by table rather than by department, and keep prizes trivial.
In a classroom, rounds three and four double as a geography and food lesson. Print one sheet per pair, run it as research rather than a race, and ask each pair to come back with one extra fact about a country from round three — Las Posadas, Krampus and the Yule Lads all have more behind them than a single line. The world round is also the one for a class where not everyone marks Christmas.
On a video call, cut to about 15 questions and read them aloud rather than sharing a screen. Ask players to type answers into the chat only on your go, or to send them privately to one nominated scorer; otherwise the first person to type answers for everybody.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I print this Christmas trivia as a quiz sheet?
Press Ctrl+P on Windows or Cmd+P on Mac. The page prints cleanly, questions and answers in order. Print one copy for the host, read the questions aloud, and give each team blank paper.
Can I get these Christmas trivia questions and answers as a PDF?
Yes — in your browser's print dialogue, change the destination printer to "Save as PDF." You get all 40 questions as one file you can share, email, or open on a tablet at the party, with no connection needed.
How many questions should a family Christmas trivia game have?
About 20 to 30 for a mixed-age group, which is 30 to 40 minutes once you allow for the arguing. Rounds one and two here come to 21 questions; all 40 run to roughly three quarters of an hour.
Is this Christmas trivia suitable for kids?
Rounds one and two — traditions, movies and songs — work well for ages 10 and up. The around-the-world and food rounds are tougher, so use them as team questions, with one child per team rather than a children's team.
Which question should I use as a tiebreak?
The twelve days of Christmas total. It has a numeric answer, so teams write a number and the closest wins without anyone adjudicating. Pull it out of round one before you start, and keep the poinsettia bracts question as a second tiebreak.
Are any of these Christmas trivia answers disputed?
Two are worth flagging as you read them out. That "Jingle Bells" was written for Thanksgiving is repeated everywhere but rests on weak evidence; what is documented is its 1857 publication as "The One Horse Open Sleigh." And "White Christmas" is the best-selling single of all time by physical sales, while Guinness lists a separate record for the era since the charts began.
Can I play this Christmas quiz online instead of printing it?
Yes — the interactive quiz on this page plays free with automatic scoring, which is handy when the family gets competitive. The Trivio.NET app adds live multiplayer, so relatives in another house can join the same game.
