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50 free Thanksgiving Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Thanksgiving music trivia quiz covers the songs and hymns that actually get played on the fourth Thursday of November: Arlo Guthrie's 18-minute Alice's Restaurant and how it became a radio ritual, Lydia Maria Child's Over the River and Through the Wood, the Dutch hymn We Gather Together, Come, Ye Thankful People, Come, Adam Sandler's Thanksgiving Song from Saturday Night Live, and Vince Guaraldi's score for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It also takes in the music of the day itself: marching bands and lip-synced Broadway numbers at the Macy's parade, the Salvation Army halftime concert at the Dallas game, Turkey in the Straw, Turkey Lurkey Time, Irving Berlin's gratitude songs and a few harvest hymns that fill church services the Sunday before. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has hosted the holiday, a third need a good memory for who wrote and sang what, and the rest reward people who know the dates, the composers and the odd stories behind the songs. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the songs, hymns and events before publishing, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. No lyrics are quoted. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who recorded 'Alice's Restaurant Massacree', the talking blues played every Thanksgiving?
Arlo Guthrie
It was the title track of his 1967 debut album and took up the whole A-side.
Q 02How long does the original recording of "Alice's Restaurant" run?
18 minutes 34 seconds
Guthrie never expected it to be released, since singles of the era ran under three minutes.
Q 03In which Massachusetts town did the Thanksgiving littering arrest in "Alice's Restaurant" take place?
Stockbridge
Guthrie and a friend dumped garbage from a deconsecrated church because the local tip was closed for the day.
Q 04What was the nickname of the police chief who arrested Guthrie in "Alice's Restaurant"?
Officer Obie
His officers gathered "twenty-seven 8-by-10 color glossy photographs" of the trash as evidence.
Q 05Why, according to Guthrie, did "Alice's Restaurant" become a Thanksgiving radio tradition?
DJs used its length to take a break
Classic rock and adult album alternative stations still air it each November, and the FCC has never punished a station for playing it.
Q 06In which year was "Alice's Restaurant" added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry?
2017
The 1969 film version starring Guthrie took numerous liberties with the story.
Q 07What war was "Alice's Restaurant" protesting?
The Vietnam War
The second half of the song is set at the Army Building on Whitehall Street, where Guthrie reported for a draft physical.
Q 08Guthrie sent a demo of "Alice's Restaurant" to which relative on his deathbed in 1967?
His father Woody
A family joke holds that it was the last thing Woody Guthrie heard before he died in October 1967.
Q 09Who wrote the 1844 poem that became the song "Over the River and Through the Wood"?
Lydia Maria Child
Child was an abolitionist writer, and the poem was originally titled "The New-England Boy's Song about Thanksgiving Day".
Q 10Whose house did the original words of "Over the River and Through the Wood" say the family was going to?
Grandfather's
Most people now sing "grandmother's", but Child wrote about her grandfather's house, said to be the Paul Curtis House.
Q 11How many stanzas did the original "Over the River and Through the Wood" poem have?
Twelve
Only four are typically sung, and a Christmas version swaps in "Hurrah for Christmas Day!"
Q 12In A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, what does Charlie Brown say after the gang sings on the way to his grandmother's?
She lives in a condominium
The line closes the 1973 special as they ride in the back of the station wagon.
Q 13The hymn "We Gather Together" was written in 1597 to celebrate a Dutch victory over which country?
Spain
Adrianus Valerius wrote it after the Battle of Turnhout, when Dutch Protestants were forbidden to gather for worship under Philip II.
Q 21On which show did Adam Sandler first perform "The Thanksgiving Song" in November 1992?
Saturday Night Live
He sang it on Weekend Update as a duet with the segment's anchor.
Q 22Which Weekend Update anchor duetted with Adam Sandler on the first performance of "The Thanksgiving Song"?
Kevin Nealon
The following year Sandler returned with a version in the style of Bruce Springsteen.
Q 23In "The Thanksgiving Song", Sandler complains the Mets traded which player, who had really left as a free agent?
Darryl Strawberry
Strawberry signed with the Dodgers; the rhyme is one of many celebrity non sequiturs in the song.
Q 14Who wrote the modern English text of "We Gather Together" in 1894?
Theodore Baker
The tune is known as Kremser after Eduard Kremser's 1877 arrangement, and the hymn first appeared in an American hymnal in 1903.
Q 15Which soap opera family traditionally sings "We Gather Together" in its annual Thanksgiving episode?
The Quartermaines on General Hospital
The hymn was also sung at the opening of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's funeral Mass.
Q 16Which West Wing episode ends with "We Gather Together" performed by the Cedarmont Kids?
Shibboleth
The season two Thanksgiving episode has President Bartlet pardoning a bird and debating a shibboleth.
Q 17Who wrote the harvest hymn "Come, Ye Thankful People, Come" in 1844?
Henry Alford
Alford was rector of Aston Sandford in Buckinghamshire, and the last verses draw on the Parable of the Tares.
Q 18"Come, Ye Thankful People, Come" is usually sung to which hymn tune, named for a royal chapel?
St. George's Windsor
Elvey's tune was attached to the words in 1858, and the hymn later became a Thanksgiving standard in the United States.
Q 19Martin Rinkart wrote 'Now Thank We All Our God' around 1636 as pastor in which German town?
Eilenburg
During the 1637 plague Rinkart was the town's only surviving pastor and conducted as many as 50 funerals a day.
Q 20Who translated "Nun danket alle Gott" into the English "Now Thank We All Our God"?
Catherine Winkworth
Rinkart originally published it as a short grace to be said before meals.
Q 24On which Adam Sandler album did the live recording of "The Thanksgiving Song" appear?
They're All Gonna Laugh at You!
The version was taped at The Strand in Redondo Beach in July 1993 and later charted on the Adult Top 40.
Q 25Who composed the music for the 1973 special A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?
Vince Guaraldi
John Scott Trotter arranged and conducted the score, recorded by the Vince Guaraldi Quintet at Wally Heider Studios.
Q 26Which song was introduced in the score of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, alongside the "Thanksgiving Theme"?
Little Birdie
The 1973 score leaned into contemporary funk and disco styles.
Q 27Which jazz hit, heard on the radio by Lee Mendelson, got its pianist the Peanuts specials?
Cast Your Fate to the Wind
Mendelson was looking for music for a documentary about Charles Schulz in 1963.
Q 28Under what title was the melody of "Turkey in the Straw" first published around 1834?
Zip Coon
The minstrel-show origin is why the tune, long used by ice cream trucks, became controversial.
Q 29Whose recording of "(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays" is the best known?
Perry Como
He recorded it twice, in 1954 and again in stereo in 1959, both with Mitchell Ayres' orchestra.
Q 30Who wrote the music for "(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays"?
Robert Allen
Al Stillman wrote the lyrics, and the Carpenters' 1984 version is the most famous cover.