12 Days of Christmas Trivia
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97 free 12 Days of Christmas trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free 12 Days of Christmas trivia questions with answers. Almost everything people think they know about the twelve days of Christmas is wrong, which makes it excellent quiz material. These 97 questions cover the carol itself — the 1780 children's book it first appeared in, the memory game it probably started as, the 1909 arrangement that added the drawn-out 'five gold rings', and the secret-catechism story that keeps circulating despite being debunked. The rest covers the season the song is named after: when the twelve days actually run, why Twelfth Night has two competing dates, what Epiphany commemorates in East and West, what happens if you find the bean in the cake, and how much it would cost to buy every gift in the song today. Every answer was checked against a primary reference before publication, so the dates, publishers and figures here are accurate rather than repeated from a Christmas listicle. Play it in December, or use it to settle the annual argument about when the decorations have to come down.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where were the words of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' first published, around 1780?
An illustrated children's book
An illustrated children's book, Mirth Without Mischief, printed the words in London around 1780 with woodcuts but no music; the tune sung today was not published until 1909.
Q 02Early sources say 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' began as what kind of parlour entertainment?
A memory-and-forfeits game
Early accounts describe a memory-and-forfeits game: each player repeated the growing list and paid a forfeit for a slip, which is why the gifts keep piling up.
Q 03Holy Innocents' Day, the fourth day of Christmas, recalls the children of Bethlehem killed on which king's orders?
Herod
Herod, in Matthew's Gospel, ordered the killing in a rage after the Magi failed to report back to him, hoping to destroy the child they had come to honour; the feast is also called Childermas.
Q 04Which part of the 'Twelve Days of Christmas' tune is credited to its 1909 arranger?
The 'five gold rings' phrase
The 'five gold rings' phrase is credited to the 1909 arranger by carol books since 1961; his own score claimed no such thing, printing the tune as 'Traditional' with only the arrangement under his name.
Q 05A popular but unsupported story says 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' was a secret catechism for which persecuted faith?
Catholicism
Catholicism: the tale has each gift hiding a doctrine for England's outlawed Catholics, but Snopes found no documentation for it, and almost every belief on the list was shared by Anglicans anyway.
Q 06Folklorists Peter and Iona Opie thought 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' might be French because which bird reached England only about 1770?
Red-legged partridge
Red-legged partridge: unlike England's native grey partridge it often perches in trees, and it was only established there about 1770, with stock from France, so the pear tree pointed across the Channel.
Q 07Which Pittsburgh-based bank has priced the gifts of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' in a tongue-in-cheek index since 1984?
PNC
PNC inherited the Christmas Price Index from a predecessor bank, whose chief economist devised it in 1984 as a joke on commodity price indexes; it has priced all twelve gifts every year since.
Q 08If you buy every gift on every day of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', how many items do you end up with?
364
Each gift repeats on every later day (12 partridges, 22 turtle doves, and so on), summing to 364 items, one short of a year's worth.
Q 09Roughly what was the 2024 True Cost of Christmas, every gift on every day?
$200,000
$200,000 is the round figure: the 2024 True Cost of Christmas, which buys each gift again every time the song repeats it, came to $209,272, more than four times the $49,263 for one set of the twelve gifts.
Q 10In the standard version of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', which gift arrives on the ninth day?
Ladies dancing
Ladies dancing come ninth in the standard 1909 arrangement, ahead of the lords, pipers and drummers; the first printing of 1780 had the same four gifts in another order, with the drummers ninth.
Q 11Which council, held in 567 in what is now France, proclaimed the days from Christmas to Epiphany a sacred season?
The Council of Tours
The Council of Tours declared the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany a sacred and festive season and, in the same breath, imposed a fast during Advent to prepare for them.
Q 12If Christmas greenery stayed up past Twelfth Night, old English custom said it must come down by which later feast?
Candlemas
Candlemas, on 2 February, was the last call: Robert Herrick's 17th-century verses for its eve order 'Down with the rosemary and bays, down with the mistletoe', and leaving greenery up any longer was thought unlucky.
Q 13Which Dickens novella features a roast goose and plum pudding at the Cratchits' table?
Q 21What do the three traditional colours of a Louisiana king cake stand for?
Justice, faith and power
Justice, faith and power are the meanings the Rex parade gave purple, green and gold in 1892, twenty years after it first proclaimed them the colours of Mardi Gras; bakers scatter all three on the cake as sugar.
Q 22Which French pastry, filled with frangipane and hiding a small charm, is eaten at Epiphany?
The galette des rois
The galette des rois is sold with a paper crown for whoever finds the charm in their slice; the south of France prefers a ring of brioche topped with candied fruit, the gâteau des rois.
Q 23Which holiday falls on the day after Christmas Day?
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol gives the Cratchits a small goose and a pudding blazing in brandy; the reformed Scrooge then secretly sends them a prize turkey 'twice the size of Tiny Tim'.
Q 14Western tradition names the Three Kings of Epiphany as Caspar, Melchior and who?
Balthasar
Balthasar completes the trio, but the names are late tradition: Matthew's Gospel names no Magi and never says how many came, so the count of three was inferred from the three gifts.
Q 15What do Eastern Christians principally commemorate at Epiphany?
The baptism of Jesus
The baptism of Jesus in the Jordan is the Eastern feast's subject; Western churches kept the day for the Magi and now mark the baptism on a feast of its own, usually the following Sunday.
Q 16Which ritual do Orthodox churches perform at Theophany?
The Great Blessing of Waters
The Great Blessing of Waters has priests bless rivers, lakes and the sea; in Greek and Bulgarian parishes a cross is thrown into the water and swimmers race to bring it back.
Q 17What do children in Spain and Latin America leave out for the Magi to fill on the eve of Epiphany?
Their shoes
Their shoes: children set them out on the night before Epiphany, in many places with grass and water for the camels, because the Three Kings rather than Santa bring the presents.
Q 18What is wassail, as a drink?
A hot mulled punch
A hot mulled punch of ale, cider or wine with spices and roasted apples, wassail was carried from house to house in a bowl by singers who traded a drink for gifts.
Q 19What does the Old Norse phrase behind the word 'wassail' mean?
Be in good health
Be in good health is the sense of Old Norse ves heill, which reached English as a plain greeting; only later did 'wassail' become a drinking formula and then the name of the drink itself.
Q 20What is the purpose of orchard wassailing?
To wake the cider apple trees
Wassailers sing and bang pots in the orchard to wake the cider apple trees and scare off evil spirits, hoping to secure a good autumn crop.
Boxing Day
Boxing Day, 26 December, is a public holiday in the UK and much of the Commonwealth; the name is first recorded in the 1830s.
Q 24Dictionaries trace the name 'Boxing Day' to which old custom?
Christmas boxes collected by tradesmen
Christmas boxes collected by tradesmen were tips of money for a year's good service; Samuel Pepys's diary for December 1663 has him dropping something into his shoemaker's boys' box 'against Christmas'.
Q 25Whose feast day falls on 26 December in the Western church calendar?
Stephen
Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is honoured on 26 December, so the carol in which Good King Wenceslas looks out 'on the feast of Stephen' and carries alms through the snow is set the day after Christmas.
Q 26What sporting tradition marks 26 December in Britain?
A full programme of league football
A full programme of league football fills 26 December; fixtures were originally arranged between local rivals so that teams and their fans would not have to travel far the day after Christmas.
Q 27Which two dates are both claimed as the twelfth night?
5 or 6 January
Counting from Christmas Day gives Twelfth Night on 5 January; counting from 26 December gives 6 January, so both dates are defended vigorously.
Q 28In the old Twelfth Night custom, whoever found which item baked into the cake was crowned king for the night?
A dried bean
A dried bean made its finder king for the night, while a pea in another slice chose the queen; the custom survives in the trinket hidden in today's king cakes.
Q 29Where and when was Shakespeare's holiday-titled comedy first known to be performed?
Middle Temple Hall in 1602
Law student John Manningham's diary records Twelfth Night at Middle Temple Hall on Candlemas night, 2 February 1602; the play takes its title from the festivity, not its plot.
Q 30Which gift-bringer visits Italian children on the night before Epiphany?
La Befana
La Befana, the legend goes, was too busy with her housework to join the Magi on their way to the infant Jesus, and has gone from house to house with gifts ever since, still looking for him.