Christmas Trivia Questions and Answers: Free Printable Quiz

How to run a Christmas trivia quiz

The quiz maker draws from 96 questions in six categories: traditions, carols, history, winter science, Christmas around the world, and stories. Pick a category and a difficulty, choose how many questions you want, and press Make quiz. The same quiz code always rebuilds the same quiz, so you can print it now and host it later.

Host mode shows one question at a time. Read it aloud, give people time to answer, then press Reveal answer. Next question moves on and Previous goes back.

• Kids: 31 questions
• Family: 40 questions
• Hard: 25 questions

Print a quiz with a separate answer key

Print quiz and key gives you a quiz sheet with an answer line under each question, then the answer key on its own page. Print quiz only is for handing out copies. Use your browser’s Save as PDF option if you would rather send a file.

Playing with teams, kids and mixed ages

For a mixed group, choose All levels, or run a Kids round first and finish with Hard. Teams of two or three keep people talking. For a large room, use host mode on a screen and have teams write answers on paper, then swap papers to mark them.

• Keep one person as host and another as scorekeeper.
• Decide how to handle partial answers before you start.

Where the questions come from

The questions are written for this site. Facts that depend on history or science are checked against the sources listed at the bottom of the page. Where scholars disagree, the answer says so: the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” is traditionally credited to Clement Clarke Moore, but some scholars credit Henry Livingston Jr. Questions about a story, such as A Christmas Carol, are answered from the published text.

Christmas trivia questions and answers: traditions and symbols

These 26 questions are in the quiz maker. Each is marked Kids, Family or Hard.

• [Kids] What do children hang by the fireplace hoping to find small gifts inside? Answer: A stocking.
• [Kids] What are the two colors of a classic candy cane? Answer: Red and white.
• [Kids] What shiny, stringy decoration is draped over the branches of a Christmas tree? Answer: Tinsel.
• [Kids] What do you call the calendar with little doors that you open one day at a time before Christmas? Answer: An Advent calendar.
• [Kids] Which plant has spiky dark green leaves and red berries and is a traditional Christmas decoration? Answer: Holly.
• [Kids] What two things are most often placed on top of a Christmas tree? Answer: A star or an angel.
• [Kids] What is the day before Christmas called? Answer: Christmas Eve.
• [Kids] What do you call people who sing Christmas songs from door to door? Answer: Carolers.
• [Kids] In which month is Christmas Day? Answer: December (December 25).
• [Kids] What plant is traditionally hung in a doorway so that people who stand under it may share a kiss? Answer: Mistletoe.
• [Kids] What round decoration of evergreen branches is often hung on a door? Answer: A wreath.
• [Family] The red “petals” of a poinsettia are not flowers. What are they? Answer: Colored leaves called bracts. The true flowers are the small yellow parts in the middle.
• [Family] The poinsettia is named after the first U.S. minister to Mexico, who sent cuttings home to South Carolina. What was his last name? Answer: Poinsett (Joel Roberts Poinsett).
• [Family] In 1843 a London civil servant named Henry Cole had an illustrated greeting printed and sold. What is it usually called? Answer: The first commercial Christmas card.
• [Family] An 1848 engraving of which royal couple and their children around a decorated tree helped make Christmas trees popular in Britain? Answer: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
• [Family] What is the day after Christmas called in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries? Answer: Boxing Day (December 26).
• [Family] The name Santa Claus comes from the Dutch name for which saint? Answer: Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas).
• [Family] On what date is Saint Nicholas’s feast day in Western churches? Answer: December 6.
• [Family] How many days after Christmas Day is New Year’s Day? Answer: Seven days (December 25 to January 1).
• [Family] Christmas Day is listed as a legal public holiday in which U.S. federal law, and on which date? Answer: 5 U.S.C. 6103 lists Christmas Day, December 25.
• [Hard] Which U.S. president pressed the button to light the first National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in 1923? Answer: Calvin Coolidge.
• [Hard] Before Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made them popular, who introduced the Christmas tree to the British court in the late 1700s, and what kind of tree was it? Answer: Queen Charlotte, consort of George III, with a yew tree.
• [Hard] Who is generally credited with the first electrically lit Christmas tree, displayed in New York City in 1882? Answer: Edward H. Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison.
• [Hard] How many copies of Henry Cole’s first Christmas card were printed in the original edition? Answer: About 1,000.
• [Hard] In which year did Congress make Christmas Day one of the legal public holidays, then for the District of Columbia? Answer: 1870.
• [Hard] Which Harper’s Weekly cartoonist’s drawings in the 1860s helped shape the American image of Santa Claus? Answer: Thomas Nast.

Christmas trivia questions and answers: carols and music

These 25 questions are in the quiz maker. Each is marked Kids, Family or Hard.

• [Kids] In “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” what does your true love give you on the first day? Answer: A partridge in a pear tree.
• [Kids] How many days are in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas”? Answer: Twelve.
• [Kids] In “Jingle Bells,” what kind of sleigh are we riding in? Answer: A one-horse open sleigh.
• [Kids] In “Deck the Halls,” what do we deck the halls with? Answer: Boughs of holly.
• [Kids] In “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” what dessert do the singers ask for? Answer: Figgy pudding.
• [Kids] Complete the line: “Dashing through the ___, in a one-horse open sleigh.” Answer: Snow.
• [Family] On the fifth day of Christmas in the song, what does your true love give you? Answer: Five gold rings.
• [Family] On the seventh day of Christmas in the song, what do you receive? Answer: Seven swans a-swimming.
• [Family] On the twelfth day of Christmas in the song, what do you receive? Answer: Twelve drummers drumming.
• [Family] On the third day of Christmas in the song, what do you receive? Answer: Three French hens.
• [Family] In which country was “Silent Night” first performed on Christmas Eve 1818? Answer: Austria (in Oberndorf, near Salzburg).
• [Family] Who wrote the words to “Joy to the World,” first published in 1719? Answer: Isaac Watts.
• [Family] Who wrote the words to “O Little Town of Bethlehem” in 1868? Answer: Phillips Brooks, a Philadelphia clergyman.
• [Family] In “Good King Wenceslas,” on the feast of which saint does the king look out? Answer: Saint Stephen (the Feast of Stephen, December 26).
• [Family] Complete the line: “Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her ___.” Answer: King.
• [Kids] Complete the line from “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”: “Glory to the newborn ___.” Answer: King.
• [Family] Complete the line: “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is ___.” Answer: Bright.
• [Family] What is the German title of the carol known in English as “O Christmas Tree”? Answer: “O Tannenbaum.”
• [Family] What is the Latin title of “O Come, All Ye Faithful”? Answer: “Adeste Fideles.”
• [Hard] If you add up every gift given across all twelve verses of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” counting each repeat, how many gifts is that? Answer: 364.
• [Hard] Which song did the Gemini 6 astronauts play on a harmonica and bells in December 1965, the first song played in space? Answer: “Jingle Bells.”
• [Hard] Who wrote the words and who wrote the melody of “Silent Night”? Answer: Words by Joseph Mohr, melody by Franz Xaver Gruber.
• [Hard] Which composer wrote “Jingle Bells,” published in 1857 under the title “One Horse Open Sleigh”? Answer: James Lord Pierpont.
• [Hard] What was the name of the 1719 collection in which Isaac Watts first published “Joy to the World”? Answer: The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament.
• [Hard] On the tenth day of Christmas in the song, what do you receive? Answer: Ten lords a-leaping.

Christmas trivia questions and answers: history

These 5 questions are in the quiz maker. Each is marked Kids, Family or Hard.

• [Family] A 1914 pause in fighting on the Western Front, when soldiers sang carols across the lines, is called what? Answer: The Christmas Truce.
• [Family] What label did Thomas Nast’s 1866 Harper’s Weekly cartoon give Santa’s home? Answer: “Santa Claussville, N.P.” (N.P. for North Pole).
• [Family] Whose poem, first printed anonymously in 1823, begins “’Twas the night before Christmas”? Answer: It is traditionally credited to Clement Clarke Moore, though some scholars credit Henry Livingston Jr.
• [Family] In which year was “A Visit from St. Nicholas” first published, in the Troy Sentinel in New York? Answer: 1823 (December 23).
• [Hard] Whose 1865 Christmas Eve visit to Bethlehem inspired “O Little Town of Bethlehem”? Answer: Phillips Brooks.

Christmas trivia questions and answers: winter science and nature

These 16 questions are in the quiz maker. Each is marked Kids, Family or Hard.

• [Kids] How many sides does a typical snow crystal have? Answer: Six.
• [Kids] At what temperature does water freeze, in degrees Fahrenheit? Answer: 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius).
• [Kids] What do you call the long, pointed spears of ice that hang from rooftops? Answer: Icicles.
• [Kids] What animal pulls Santa’s sleigh in the poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”? Answer: Reindeer (eight of them).
• [Kids] In the Northern Hemisphere, which season is it on Christmas Day? Answer: Winter.
• [Kids] Cocoa and chocolate are made from the beans of which tree? Answer: The cacao tree.
• [Family] Why is snow white even though ice crystals are clear? Answer: The many crystal faces scatter all colors of visible light about equally.
• [Family] What causes the seasons on Earth? Answer: Earth’s tilted axis, not its distance from the Sun.
• [Family] In the Northern Hemisphere, which day has the least daylight of the year, around December 21 or 22? Answer: The winter solstice.
• [Family] In North America, what is the wild form of the animal called a reindeer in Europe? Answer: The caribou. Reindeer and caribou are one species.
• [Family] Unlike most deer, which reindeer sexes grow antlers? Answer: Both males and females.
• [Family] Cinnamon comes from which part of a tree? Answer: The inner bark.
• [Hard] By how many degrees is Earth’s axis tilted from its orbital plane, about? Answer: About 23.5 degrees.
• [Hard] In December, is Earth closer to or farther from the Sun than it is in July? Answer: Closer. Earth is nearest the Sun around January 3.
• [Hard] Which reindeer are most likely to still carry antlers in midwinter, large bulls or pregnant cows? Answer: Pregnant cows. Large bulls shed theirs around late October.
• [Hard] According to NOAA, why do snow crystals have a six-sided shape? Answer: It reflects how water molecules arrange themselves in ice.

Christmas trivia questions and answers: around the world

These 12 questions are in the quiz maker. Each is marked Kids, Family or Hard.

• [Kids] In Spanish, what does “Feliz Navidad” mean? Answer: Merry Christmas.
• [Kids] In which language do people say “Joyeux Noël”? Answer: French.
• [Kids] In which U.S. state do people say “Mele Kalikimaka”? Answer: Hawaii (it is the Hawaiian way to say Merry Christmas).
• [Kids] In which language do people say “Frohe Weihnachten”? Answer: German.
• [Family] In Australia, which season is it on Christmas Day? Answer: Summer.
• [Family] Kwanzaa begins on which date and lasts how many days? Answer: It begins December 26 and lasts seven days, to January 1.
• [Family] How many nights does Hanukkah last? Answer: Eight.
• [Family] In Mexico, the nine nights of Las Posadas lead up to Christmas Eve. On which date do they begin? Answer: December 16.
• [Hard] Who created Kwanzaa in 1966? Answer: Maulana Karenga.
• [Hard] The Swahili phrase that Kwanzaa’s name comes from means what? Answer: “First fruits” (matunda ya kwanza).
• [Hard] In Iceland, how many Yule Lads visit during the thirteen nights before Christmas? Answer: Thirteen.
• [Hard] Hanukkah marks the rededication of what? Answer: The Temple in Jerusalem.

Christmas trivia questions and answers: stories and poems

These 12 questions are in the quiz maker. Each is marked Kids, Family or Hard.

• [Kids] In A Christmas Carol, who is the grumpy miser? Answer: Ebenezer Scrooge.
• [Kids] In A Christmas Carol, which child says “God bless us, every one!”? Answer: Tiny Tim.
• [Kids] In “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” which creature is not stirring, “not even a mouse”? Answer: A mouse.
• [Family] What two words does Scrooge famously say about Christmas at the start of A Christmas Carol? Answer: “Bah! Humbug!”
• [Family] Who wrote A Christmas Carol? Answer: Charles Dickens.
• [Family] How many ghosts visit Scrooge after Marley’s ghost? Answer: Three: Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come.
• [Family] What is the first name of Scrooge’s dead business partner, Marley? Answer: Jacob.
• [Family] Name the three gifts that the Magi bring in the Gospel of Matthew. Answer: Gold, frankincense and myrrh.
• [Hard] In A Christmas Carol, who was the cheerful merchant Scrooge once worked for as a young man? Answer: Mr. Fezziwig.
• [Hard] What is the first name of Scrooge’s nephew in A Christmas Carol? Answer: Fred.
• [Hard] What is Bob Cratchit’s job in A Christmas Carol? Answer: He is Scrooge’s clerk.
• [Hard] The Gospel of Matthew lists three gifts. Does it say how many wise men there were? Answer: No. The number three comes from the three gifts, not from the text.