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50 free Hard Christmas trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
41 free hard Christmas trivia questions with answers. Most Christmas trivia is too easy for a room of adults. This set is not: it covers the year Boston fined people five shillings for keeping Christmas, the two reindeer whose names were different in 1823, the origin story about candy canes that historians think was invented in the twentieth century, and who actually wrote the carols. It is also difficult holiday trivia in the wider sense. Alongside the Christmas questions you will find the Roman festival that came before it, the helper light on a Hanukkah menorah, the year Kwanzaa was created, a Christmas riot at a military academy, a Swedish straw goat that keeps getting burned down, and the reason the Times Square ball did not drop during the war. 50 questions, answers and explanations included, every one checked against a cited source.
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Q 01The Christmas truce took place during which year of the First World War?
1914
The Christmas truce came in 1914, the war's first December: informal ceasefires along the Western Front brought carols, gift swaps and joint burials.
Q 02Which country's 1970s advertising campaign turned KFC fried chicken into a national Christmas custom?
Japan
In Japan, a successful 1970s ad campaign made eating KFC around Christmas a national custom, so effective that by the 2020s families were booking buckets weeks in advance.
Q 03Who composed the song "White Christmas"?
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin wrote "White Christmas"; Bing Crosby's recording became the best-selling single of all time, and the song won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for 1942.
Q 04'Silent Night', first sung in 1818, was added to which organisation's intangible cultural heritage list in 2011?
UNESCO
UNESCO declared the carol intangible cultural heritage in 2011, nearly two centuries after it was first sung.
Q 05Boxing Day's name is most often traced back to what?
Church alms boxes
One leading theory points to the alms box in a church narthex, opened to distribute collections to the poor.
Q 06Which carol's words did Charles Wesley write in 1739?
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Charles Wesley wrote "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" in 1739; its familiar tune was adapted in 1855 by William H. Cummings from a Mendelssohn cantata.
Q 07Krampus traditionally accompanies Saint Nicholas on the night of which date?
5 December
Krampusnacht falls on 5 December, the eve of the Feast of Saint Nicholas on 6 December; Krampus handles the punishments while Nicholas hands out gifts.
Q 08Who wrote the melody of "Silent Night"?
Franz Xaver Gruber
Franz Xaver Gruber, Oberndorf's schoolmaster and organist, composed the melody on 24 December 1818 to words by the priest Joseph Mohr, scored for voices and guitar.
Q 09"White Christmas" was first introduced in which 1942 film?
Holiday Inn
Bing Crosby introduced "White Christmas" in Holiday Inn (1942), a musical about an inn open only on holidays; the song later got its own 1954 film.
Q 10Which body outlawed the observance of Christmas in England in 1647?
The Puritan-led Parliament
Parliament dismissed it as a festival with no scriptural basis and an excuse for excess.
Q 11Who commissioned the first commercial Christmas card in 1843?
Henry Cole
Sir Henry Cole commissioned the first commercial Christmas card in 1843; about a thousand copies were printed and sold for a shilling each.
Q 12Joel Roberts Poinsett, who gave the poinsettia its English name, held which post?
First US minister to Mexico
Joel Roberts Poinsett was the first US minister to Mexico (1825-29); he sent cuttings of the plant home to his South Carolina greenhouses in the late 1820s.
Q 13Saint Nicholas served as bishop of which ancient city?
Myra
Nicholas was bishop of Myra in Lycia, today's Demre in southern Turkey, in the fourth century; his reputation for secret gift-giving spread from there.
Q 21Which artist illustrated the first commercial Christmas card?
J.C. Horsley
His triptych showed a family at table flanked by scenes of people helping the poor.
Q 22Boston's 1659 law against keeping Christmas carried a fine of how much?
Five shillings
The 1659 Massachusetts Bay law set a fine of five shillings for anyone found feasting or refraining from work on Christmas; it was repealed in 1681.
Q 23Which poet is usually credited with "A Visit from St. Nicholas", though the attribution is disputed?
Clement Clarke Moore
Clement Clarke Moore acknowledged the anonymous 1823 poem as his in 1837 and printed it in his 1844 collection; Henry Livingston Jr.'s descendants have long claimed it for him.
Q 14Which writer created the red-nosed reindeer character in 1939?
Robert L. May
Robert L. May wrote the Rudolph story in 1939 as a work assignment for Chicago retailer Montgomery Ward; the song based on it charted ten years later.
Q 15Who wrote the song "Jingle Bells"?
James Lord Pierpont
James Lord Pierpont wrote "Jingle Bells", first published as "One Horse Open Sleigh", a song about winter sleigh racing that had no original connection to Christmas.
Q 16Roughly how many British and German troops took part in the Christmas truce?
100,000
Accounts of carols, gift swaps and joint burials come from stretches all along the Western Front.
Q 17Whose recording of the red-nosed reindeer song topped the US pop chart at Christmas 1949?
Gene Autry
Gene Autry's recording reached number one on the Billboard pop chart for Christmas week 1949, turning a Montgomery Ward booklet character into a permanent fixture.
Q 18Estimated physical sales of the best-known "White Christmas" recording exceed how many copies?
50 million
Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" has estimated physical sales above 50 million copies, making it the best-selling single of all time.
Q 19Which publication's 1848 engraving of the royal family made Christmas trees fashionable in Britain?
The Illustrated London News
The Illustrated London News printed the engraving of Victoria and Albert around a decorated tree in December 1848; the custom then spread through Britain and East Coast America.
Q 20In what year was "Jingle Bells" first published?
1857
"Jingle Bells" was first published in September 1857 as "One Horse Open Sleigh"; it picked up its familiar title on republication in 1859.
Q 24Moravian Germans in Pennsylvania set up a community Christmas display in 1747 in what form?
A wooden pyramid
The Moravians of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania built a candle-decorated wooden pyramid in 1747, about 70 years before the state's earliest record of a cut Christmas tree.
Q 25In the original 1823 printing of "A Visit from St. Nicholas", two reindeer were named what?
Dunder and Blixem
The 1823 Troy Sentinel printing named them Dunder and Blixem, from the Dutch for thunder and lightning; later editions reshaped them into Donder and then Donner and Blitzen.
Q 26On which day of the month did the Roman festival of Saturnalia begin?
The 17th
By the 1st century BC the party had been stretched to the 23rd, a full week in which masters waited on their own slaves and a mock 'King of the Saturnalia' barked orders.
Q 27Which Ukrainian composer arranged the folk chant 'Shchedryk' that became 'Carol of the Bells'?
Mykola Leontovych
Mykola Leontovych arranged the New Year chant 'Shchedryk', first performed in Kyiv in 1916; Peter J. Wilhousky's 1936 English lyrics turned it into "Carol of the Bells".
Q 28Which carol did Adolphe Adam compose in 1847 to a poem by Placide Cappeau?
O Holy Night
Adolphe Adam set Cappeau's poem 'Minuit, chrétiens' in 1847; it became "O Holy Night" in John Sullivan Dwight's 1855 English version.
Q 29An East India Company captain named Christmas Island on Christmas Day of which year?
1643
Captain William Mynors of the Royal Mary named the island on Christmas Day 1643; it is an external territory of Australia, famous for its annual red crab migration.
Q 30Which US president lit the first National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in 1923?
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge pressed the button to light the first National Christmas Tree, a 48-foot balsam fir from Vermont, on 24 December 1923.