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50 free Christmas Book trivia questions with answers. Christmas has its own shelf of literature, and this quiz walks the whole length of it. Fifty questions cover Dickens and A Christmas Carol (plus his four forgotten follow-ups), Dr. Seuss's Grinch, The Polar Express, the disputed authorship of 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', Hoffmann's Nutcracker, O. Henry's Gift of the Magi, Rudolph's department-store origins, Raymond Briggs's Snowman, Andersen's winter tales, Tolkien's letters from Father Christmas, Capote, Dylan Thomas, Pratchett's Hogfather, Agatha Christie's Christmas murder and the modern picture books from The Elf on the Shelf to The Christmas Pig. Easy questions ask who wrote The Polar Express and what the Grinch's dog is called; the hard ones want the reindeer names in the 1823 printing, the name Dickens nearly gave Tiny Tim and the tavern where O. Henry supposedly wrote his story. Good for book clubs, classrooms and anyone who rereads the same story every December. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the books and their authors, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
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Q 01Which London firm published A Christmas Carol in December 1843?
Chapman & Hall
The same publishers had just threatened to cut Dickens's monthly income by £50 if his sales kept slipping.
Q 02How long did Dickens take to write A Christmas Carol?
Six weeks
His biographer Michael Slater says it was written 'at white heat', with the final pages finished in early December 1843.
Q 03What did Dickens call the five sections of A Christmas Carol, in keeping with the musical title?
Staves
A stave is a musical staff, so the book is a 'carol' in five staves; Marley's ghost appears in the first and Scrooge wakes reformed in the last.
Q 04Which two emaciated children does the Ghost of Christmas Present reveal beneath his robe?
Ignorance and Want
The spirit warns Scrooge to beware the boy above all; the pair were inspired by children Dickens saw at a ragged school in London's East End.
Q 05Which two-word festive greeting, first recorded in 1534, did Dickens's 1843 novella popularise?
Merry Christmas
'Bah! Humbug!' also entered the language from the book, and 'Scrooge' was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as a word for a miser in 1982.
Q 06Which name did Dickens reject for Bob Cratchit's frail youngest son before settling on Tiny Tim?
Tiny Mick
He also tried 'Little Fred', a name he then recycled for Scrooge's cheerful nephew, before settling on Tiny Tim.
Q 07Trotty Veck, a ticket-porter haunted by goblins on New Year's Eve, stars in which Dickens Christmas book?
The Chimes
It came out in 1844, one year after A Christmas Carol, as the second of five Christmas books Dickens published that decade.
Q 08In which year did Dr. Seuss publish How the Grinch Stole Christmas!?
1957
It came out the same year as The Cat in the Hat, and appeared almost simultaneously in an issue of Redbook magazine.
Q 09What is the name of the Grinch's long-suffering dog, who pulls his sleigh disguised as a reindeer?
Max
The Grinch dresses himself as Santa Claus and heads down to Whoville with his dog pulling the sleigh.
Q 10For how many years had the Grinch endured Whoville's noisy Christmas celebrations before he snapped?
53
Seuss was exactly that age when he wrote the book, and he admitted seeing 'a very Grinch-ish countenance' in his own mirror on 26 December.
Q 11The Grinch first appeared in print in which 1953 Dr. Seuss book, four years before he stole Christmas?
Scrambled Eggs Super!
He then starred in a 33-line poem, 'The Hoobub and the Grinch', in Redbook in May 1955.
Q 12Who wrote and illustrated The Polar Express (1985)?
Chris Van Allsburg
He drew it in pastel pencils, sharpened to a fine point, and set part of the story in his home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Q 13The Polar Express won its creator a second Caldecott Medal in 1986. Which book won the first?
Jumanji
Both winners were later turned into films, and he served as executive producer on the 2004 Polar Express movie.
Q 21How many heads does the Mouse King have in the original 1816 story?
7
After the battle the Nutcracker presents Marie with all of the Mouse King's crowns, which her parents still refuse to accept as proof.
Q 22Which American writer published the short story 'The Gift of the Magi' in 1905?
O. Henry
It first ran in The New York Sunday World on 10 December 1905 and was collected in The Four Million the following spring.
Q 23How much money does Della have to buy Jim's Christmas present at the start of 'The Gift of the Magi'?
$1.87
She sells her hair for $20 to buy a platinum watch chain, not knowing Jim has sold the watch to buy her combs.
Q 14In The Polar Express, what does the boy ask Santa for as the first gift of Christmas?
A silver bell
It falls through a hole in his pocket on the way home, only to turn up under the tree; his parents think it is broken because they cannot hear it ring.
Q 15'A Visit from St. Nicholas' was first printed anonymously in 1823 in which New York town?
Troy
It ran in the Sentinel on 23 December 1823, sent in by a friend of Clement Clarke Moore, and was reprinted for years with no name attached.
Q 16Which Poughkeepsie poet's family has long claimed he, not Clement Clarke Moore, wrote 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?
Henry Livingston Jr.
Vassar professor Donald Foster backed the rival claim in 2000, though later computer-based forensic linguistics came down on Moore's side.
Q 17In the poem's 1823 printing, which Dutch-flavoured pair stood in for 'Donner and Blitzen'?
Dunder and Blixem
Both mean thunder and lightning; the German-sounding forms crept in through later reprints.
Q 18By profession, Clement Clarke Moore was a professor of what?
Oriental and Greek literature
He taught at New York's General Theological Seminary, built on land he donated, and grew rich developing the Manhattan estate that became Chelsea.
Q 19Who wrote the 1816 tale 'The Nutcracker and the Mouse King'?
E. T. A. Hoffmann
The first edition's title page carried a colour plate of the Mouse King drawn by the author himself.
Q 20Tchaikovsky's 1892 Nutcracker used a lighter French retelling, not the 1816 German original. Who wrote the retelling?
Alexandre Dumas
The retelling dates from 1844; the ballet also renamed the heroine Clara, whereas the 1816 original calls her Marie.
Q 24'The Gift of the Magi' was allegedly written in which New York City establishment?
Pete's Tavern
The bar on Irving Place still trades on the claim; the couple in the story are named Della and Jim Dillingham Young.
Q 25Raymond Briggs's 1978 picture book The Snowman is told entirely without what?
Words
Briggs drew it in coloured pencils and always insisted it was not a Christmas book; the festive setting was added by the 1982 animated film.
Q 26Which choirboy actually sang 'Walking in the Air' in the 1982 animated film of The Snowman?
Peter Auty
Aled Jones's better-known version came later, as a 1985 single; the film's singer was a St Paul's Cathedral chorister.
Q 27Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 as a giveaway booklet for which retailer?
Montgomery Ward
The Chicago store had been buying in Christmas colouring books and decided a story of its own would be cheaper; 2.4 million copies went out that first year.
Q 28Robert L. May considered two other names for his reindeer before choosing Rudolph. Which pair?
Rollo and Reginald
May said he was inspired by a thick fog rolling in off Lake Michigan outside his Chicago office window.
Q 29What did retail president Sewell Avery hand to Robert L. May in the 1940s, setting him up for life?
The copyright to Rudolph
May had been deep in debt from his wife's medical bills; the transfer took effect on 1 January 1947 and the first commercial edition followed that Christmas.
Q 30In Little Women, Marmee asks the sisters to give their Christmas breakfast to which poor family?
The Hummels
Their wealthy neighbour Mr Laurence rewards the gesture by sending over a surprise dinner that evening.