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50 free Christmas Tree trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Christmas tree trivia covers the one decoration almost everyone puts up without ever asking why. These 50 questions trace the tree from medieval guild halls and Strasbourg Cathedral to Queen Victoria's Windsor Castle, the first electric lights in 1882 and the 50,000 bulbs on the Rockefeller Center tree. The set covers the origins of the custom, tinsel, glass baubles and feather trees, the White House and Trafalgar Square trees, tree species and tree farms, and a few oddities like Georgia's shaved-hazelnut chichilaki and the aluminium trees that Charlie Brown killed off. Every answer is checked against a cited source and each explanation adds one more fact. Use it for a December quiz night or the family table on decorating day. Play now and see how much you really know about the tree in your living room.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which region did the modern Christmas tree custom first develop?
Central Europe and the Baltics
Protestant Christians in Germany and Livonia, now Estonia and Latvia, were the first to bring decorated trees indoors.
Q 02The earliest record of a Christmas tree in a church is from 1539 in which cathedral?
Strasbourg
The 1539 tree stood in Strasbourg Cathedral, then in Protestant hands under the reformer Martin Bucer; a 1605 Strasbourg account is also the earliest description of decorated indoor Christmas trees.
Q 03Which guild in Tallinn and Riga put up holiday trees as early as 1441?
The Brotherhood of Blackheads
The Brotherhood of Blackheads, a guild of unmarried merchants, set up trees in their guild houses in Tallinn from 1441 and in Riga by 1510; a 1584 chronicle describes young men dancing round the tree and setting it alight.
Q 04Which Protestant reformer is sometimes credited with first putting lighted candles on an evergreen tree?
Martin Luther
A popular legend credits Martin Luther with adding lighted candles to an evergreen after seeing stars through fir branches; Moravian Christians later made candlelit trees common, before electric lights took over.
Q 05An 1848 engraving of which royal family's tree made Christmas trees fashionable in Britain and America?
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's
The Illustrated London News printed an engraving of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's decorated tree at Windsor Castle in December 1848, and the fashion spread quickly through the British middle classes and across the Atlantic.
Q 06What did Godey's Lady's Book remove from the royal Christmas tree picture when it reprinted it?
The queen's tiara and Prince Albert's moustache
Godey's Lady's Book reprinted the Windsor engraving in 1850 with the queen's tiara and Prince Albert's moustache removed, turning a royal scene into an all-American family Christmas.
Q 07Who created the first known electrically lit Christmas tree, at his New York home in 1882?
Edward Hibberd Johnson
Edward Hibberd Johnson, a vice-president of Edison's electric company, lit the first electric Christmas tree at his New York home in December 1882, with hand-blown red, white and blue bulbs made specially for it.
Q 08How many bulbs were on that first electric Christmas tree of 1882?
80
Edward Johnson's 1882 tree carried 80 hand-wired bulbs, coloured red, white and blue and about the size of walnuts, on a stand that revolved.
Q 09Modern tinsel was invented around 1610 in which German city, and made from what?
Nuremberg, from shredded silver
Tinsel was invented around 1610 in Nuremberg, from shredded silver; because silver tarnished too quickly, cheaper shiny metals and later synthetic strands took its place.
Q 10The mould-blown glass bauble was invented in which small German town?
Lauscha
Lauscha, a glassmaking town in Thuringia, produced the first glass baubles: Hans Greiner started with garlands of glass beads and tin figures, and the town's artisans, using clay moulds, grew into a whole ornament industry.
Q 11What were the earliest German artificial Christmas trees made from?
Green-dyed goose feathers
Germany's first artificial trees, from the 1880s, were made of green-dyed goose feathers fixed to wire branches, a response to deforestation caused by Christmas tree cutting.
Q 12The first artificial tree made from brush bristles was created in 1930 by a British company known for making what?
Toilet brushes
The Addis Brush Company, a British maker of toilet brushes, built the first brush-bristle artificial tree in 1930 using the same animal-hair bristles and machinery as its brushes, only dyed green.
Q 13Where were aluminium Christmas trees first manufactured in the United States, in 1958?
Chicago
Q 21The Vatican did not put up its first Christmas tree until which year?
1982
Pope John Paul II introduced the first Vatican Christmas tree in St Peter's Square in 1982; because the custom had grown up among Lutherans, the Catholic Church was a late adopter.
Q 22What does the traditional tree topper represent, according to the Nativity story?
The Star of Bethlehem and the angel Gabriel
A star or angel topper stands for the Star of Bethlehem and the angel Gabriel respectively: the star guided the Magi to the stable, and Gabriel announced the birth, both in the Nativity story.
Q 23A legend from the year 723 has Saint Boniface chopping down what to end a pagan sacrifice?
Aluminium trees were first made in Chicago in 1958; most were later produced in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, by the Aluminum Specialty Company, and the Charlie Brown TV special helped kill the fad.
Q 14Which US president put up the first Christmas tree in the White House, in 1889?
Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison put up a candlelit tree for his grandchildren in 1889, the first documented White House Christmas tree; Grover Cleveland's 1895 tree was the first there with electric lights.
Q 15The National Christmas Tree near the White House has been a tradition since which year?
1923
President Calvin Coolidge lit the first National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in 1923, and the December lighting grew into one of the biggest annual events at the White House.
Q 16The famous Rockefeller Center tree in New York has been a tradition since which year?
1933
Rockefeller Center's tree became an official annual tradition in 1933, two years after construction workers put up a small unofficial tree in 1931; it is usually a giant spruce between 69 and 100 feet tall.
Q 17Roughly how many lights are hung on the Rockefeller Center tree?
50,000
About 50,000 multicoloured LED lights on some five miles of wire cover the Rockefeller Center tree, strung by workers on scaffolding; the star on top, redesigned in 2018 by Daniel Libeskind, is covered in Swarovski crystals.
Q 18The city of Oslo has given London a Christmas tree for Trafalgar Square every year since when?
1947
Oslo has sent London a spruce for Trafalgar Square every year since 1947, as thanks for Britain's support of Norway during World War II, when the exiled King Haakon VII lived in London.
Q 19How old is the giant spruce that Oslo sends to Trafalgar Square, typically?
50 to 60 years
The Trafalgar Square spruce is typically 50 to 60 years old and more than 20 metres tall, chosen from Oslo's forests years in advance and felled in a November ceremony attended by the Lord Mayor of Westminster.
Q 20The tree of paradise in medieval mystery plays, a possible Christmas tree ancestor, was staged on which date?
24 December
Paradise plays were staged on 24 December, the feast day of Adam and Eve in the medieval calendar, with a fir standing in for the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.
A giant oak
Saint Boniface felled Donar's Oak, a giant oak sacred to pagan Germanic tribes near Fritzlar, in 723; later versions of the legend add that a fir grew in its place, its triangular shape standing for the Trinity.
Q 24The phrase 'Charlie Brown Christmas tree' comes from a TV special first shown in which year?
1965
A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired on CBS on 9 December 1965; its scrawny real tree is also blamed for ending the aluminium-tree craze.
Q 25Which fir, grown in the mountains of North Carolina, has been called the Cadillac of Christmas Trees?
Fraser fir
The Fraser fir, grown in North Carolina's high mountains, is nicknamed the Cadillac of Christmas Trees for its sturdy upturned branches and pleasant scent, and is among the most popular and valuable Christmas tree species in North America.
Q 26Which US state grows more Christmas trees than any other?
Oregon
Oregon grows more Christmas trees than any other US state, several million a year, mostly Douglas and noble firs from the Willamette Valley; North Carolina, with its Fraser firs, ranks second.
Q 27About how long does a Christmas tree grow on a farm before it is cut?
Ten years
A farmed Christmas tree takes about ten years to reach a six- to seven-foot height, though fast-growing species manage it in seven; almost all US trees now come from farms, with a new tree planted for each one cut.
Q 28What is a chichilaki?
A Georgian tree made of shaved hazelnut branches
A chichilaki is a Georgian tree made of shaved hazelnut branches, dried and curled into strips; Georgians say it resembles the beard of Saint Basil, and it is burned before Epiphany to send off the old year's troubles.
Q 29What does Tannenbaum, as in the carol O Tannenbaum, mean in German?
Fir tree
The song began as a folk tune about the fir's faithfulness before it became a Christmas carol.
Q 30What were the earliest decorated German trees hung with?
Apples, nuts and straw stars
The earliest German trees carried homemade ornaments such as apples, nuts and straw stars; a 1570 Bremen guild chronicle lists apples, nuts, dates and pretzels, with sweets for the apprentices coming next in the guild halls.