48 Fun Facts About Black Holiday

The 2007 film This Christmas is named after a 1970 song by which soul singer?

Donny Hathaway. He and his collaborators set out in 1970 to write a Christmas song that would become a standard, and it grew familiar enough to lend a family film its title.

In a 2007 holiday film, which singer plays 'Baby' Whitfield, the youngest sibling with a secret singing talent?

Chris Brown plays Michael 'Baby' Whitfield, the youngest sibling, who has been hiding a singing ambition his mother discourages because their musician father abandoned the family.

Who wrote and directed The Best Man Holiday, the 2013 sequel to The Best Man?

Malcolm D. Lee. His cousin Spike Lee produced the 1999 original, and the $17 million sequel took about $30 million in its first weekend, running Thor: The Dark World close for the top spot.

In The Best Man Holiday, the four friends lip-sync a dance routine to which New Edition ballad?

Can You Stand the Rain. The men mime the 1988 hit at a pyjama party, and the fun goes some way to patching up the old quarrel between Lance and Harper.

Which actor plays widowed patriarch Walter Meyers in the 2016 family comedy Almost Christmas?

Danny Glover. His widower gathers four grown children for their first Christmas since his wife died and asks only that they get through five days under one roof.

Which Grammy-winning singer was a producer of Netflix's 2020 musical Jingle Jangle?

John Legend. He joined the film's writer-director as a producer, on a story first planned as a stage show before it became a screen musical.

The Preacher's Wife (1996) remakes a 1947 Cary Grant film about an angel helping which clergyman?

A bishop. In The Bishop's Wife the churchman prays for help funding a new cathedral, and Cary Grant's angel Dudley sets about mending his neglected family life instead.

Who directed The Preacher's Wife?

Penny Marshall. The director of Big filmed through a winter of heavy East Coast snow, yet when she took her cast to Maine for the ice-skating scene the ice melted and the crew had to make fake snow.

Which Whitney Houston single from The Preacher's Wife soundtrack reached number four on the Hot 100?

I Believe in You and Me. The Four Tops' original had stalled at number 40 on the R&B chart, and Houston's cover for the film carried the song into the pop top five.

In Last Holiday (2006), Queen Latifah's Georgia Byrd works in which department of a New Orleans store?

Cookware is Georgia Byrd's department at Kragen's; a mistaken terminal diagnosis sends her off to spend her savings in Europe, and she comes home to open a restaurant of her own.

Which TV chef's recipes does Georgia Byrd lovingly recreate in Last Holiday?

Emeril Lagasse. Georgia makes his gourmet dishes and serves them to a neighbour without allowing herself a bite, and the chef turns up in person at the restaurant she finally opens.

In Friday After Next, a robber dressed as whom breaks into Craig and Day-Day's apartment?

Santa Claus is the disguise of the burglar who breaks into Craig and Day-Day's apartment, making off with the presents and the rent money owed to landlady Ms. Pearly.

What jobs do Craig and Day-Day take on Christmas Eve in Friday After Next?

Security guards are what Craig and Day-Day become, patrolling a local shopping centre to earn back the stolen rent money; Ice Cube plays Craig and also wrote the screenplay.

Netflix's 2020 musical Jingle Jangle stars Forest Whitaker as which toymaker?

Jeronicus Jangle, played by Forest Whitaker, is the once-celebrated toymaker whose inventions are stolen by his apprentice Gustafson, played by Keegan-Michael Key.

Which network premiered A Diva's Christmas Carol (2000), with Vanessa Williams as Ebony Scrooge?

VH1. The music channel premiered its Dickens update in December 2000, and its Ghost of Christmas Future arrives as a tiny television playing a bleak episode of the channel's own Behind the Music.

Which comedian plays Buddy, the bride's father-in-law, in Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas?

Larry the Cable Guy. His Buddy arrives in Bucktussle, Alabama, and agrees to keep quiet about a marriage that the bride is hiding from her mother, Eileen.

The 2013 film Black Nativity, with Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett, is based on a 1961 play by whom?

Langston Hughes. Kasi Lemmons's film follows a Baltimore teenager, himself named Langston, who is sent to spend Christmas in New York with the grandparents he has never known.

Who plays the rapper J-Jizzy in The Perfect Holiday (2007), the comedy narrated by Queen Latifah?

Charlie Murphy plays the rapper J-Jizzy, whose ex-wife Nancy (Gabrielle Union) falls for Morris Chestnut's Benjamin, a songwriter trying to pitch J-Jizzy a Christmas song.

Who plays the drag queen title role in Showtime's Holiday Heart (2000)?

Ving Rhames plays Holiday Heart, a drag performer who takes in Alfre Woodard's struggling mother Wanda and her daughter Niki, in a TV film directed by Robert Townsend.

In Last Holiday, which rapper-actor plays Sean, the co-worker Georgia Byrd secretly pictures as her dream husband?

LL Cool J. His Sean Williams flies to Europe after learning of Georgia's diagnosis and ends up hiking through the snow to reach her hotel when an avalanche blocks the road.

In which city was 'This Christmas' recorded in the autumn of 1970?

Chicago. The singer was born there and had moved back after college, and he cut the track at the city's Audio Finishers Studio with local musicians in the autumn of 1970.

Run-DMC's 1987 holiday single first appeared on which charity compilation?

A Very Special Christmas. The benefit album for the Special Olympics launched 'Christmas in Hollis', and a year later a limousine driver was playing the track in the opening scenes of Die Hard.

'Christmas in Hollis' samples 'Back Door Santa', a 1968 holiday song by which soul singer?

Clarence Carter. His song gave Run-DMC their hook, though the group had at first refused to make a Christmas record at all and gave in only when their publicist, Bill Adler, pitched the idea.

Which blues singer and pianist wrote and recorded 'Please Come Home for Christmas' in 1960?

Charles Brown. His single stalled at number 76 on the pop chart, yet it kept coming back at Christmas and topped Billboard's Christmas singles chart in 1972, twelve years after he recorded it.

Johnny Moore's Three Blazers recorded the 1947 original of which R&B holiday standard?

Merry Christmas Baby. By his own account the trio's singer and pianist reworked it from a song by Lou Baxter, who needed the advance for a throat operation, yet the writing credit went to Baxter and Johnny Moore.

Which singer made the original 1953 recording of 'Santa Baby'?

Eartha Kitt. Joan Javits and Philip Springer wrote the tongue-in-cheek wish list for her, and it became a holiday hit and the song most tied to her name.

Who first recorded 'The Christmas Song', in 1946?

Nat King Cole. His trio cut the song twice in 1946, and it was the second take, with a small string section added, that became the hit; he recorded it again in stereo in 1961.

'The Christmas Song' was written during a heatwave in July 1945 by Robert Wells and which singer?

Mel Tormé. He and lyricist Robert Wells finished the song in under an hour on a sweltering July day, after Wells jotted down wintry images to take his mind off the heat.

Which Motown team wrote the Jackson 5's "Give Love on Christmas Day", "I Want You Back" and "ABC"?

The Corporation. Berry Gordy formed the four-man team in 1969 and credited it under one name because he wanted no more 'back room superstars' like Holland-Dozier-Holland, who had quit the label.

Bass singer Melvin Franklin signs off a 1980 'Silent Night' with a 'Merry Christmas' from which Motown group?

The Temptations. Their recording became a fixture of R&B radio every December: sixteen years later Billboard named it the most popular holiday title on those stations.

Which singer-songwriter co-produced Boyz II Men's 1993 album Christmas Interpretations and sang on its single?

Brian McKnight. He co-produced most of the album and sang on its single, 'Let It Snow', a new song rather than the old standard; apart from 'Silent Night', every track was an original.

Whitney Houston's only Christmas album, One Wish: The Holiday Album (2003), features a duet with whom?

Her daughter Bobbi Kristina, then ten, sings with Houston on 'Little Drummer Boy'; the album's title single was a cover of Freddie Jackson's 'One Wish (for Christmas)'.

Which carol did Whitney Houston record for an all-star charity Christmas album in 1987?

Do You Hear What I Hear. Noël Regney and Gloria Shayne wrote it in 1962 as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Houston sang it on a benefit record 25 years later.

Destiny's Child's only holiday album, released in 2001, is titled what?

8 Days of Christmas. The title song came first: Beyoncé said that writing it two years earlier was what gave the group the idea of making a whole Christmas album.

Which rapper released 'Christmas in Harlem' in December 2010, featuring Teyana Taylor?

Kanye West. Producer Hit-Boy had never heard his beat as Christmas music; West did, and within months he had signed the 23-year-old to his GOOD Music label.

Who co-wrote 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' with Mariah Carey?

Walter Afanasieff co-wrote and co-produced 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' with Mariah Carey for her 1994 album Merry Christmas; the song first reached number one on the Hot 100 in December 2019.

Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by which activist?

Maulana Karenga. The activist, later a professor of Africana studies, created Kwanzaa in 1966 in the wake of the Watts riots, modelling it on African first-fruits harvest festivals.

The name Kwanzaa comes from a phrase meaning 'first fruits' in which language?

Swahili. The phrase is 'matunda ya kwanza', first fruits, a nod to the African harvest festivals the holiday is modelled on; the final 'a' is an extra letter its name picked up early on.

What is the first of Kwanzaa's seven principles, celebrated on December 26?

Umoja (Unity), the principle of striving for unity in family, community, nation and race, is honoured on December 26, the first of the seven nights, when the black centre candle is lit.

What is the Kwanzaa candle holder, which holds seven candles, called?

Kinara. It stands for the roots of the people, their African ancestors, and holds the Mishumaa Saba, the seven candles lit one a day, beginning with the black one at the centre.

Kwanzaa culminates in a communal feast, usually on the sixth night, called what?

Karamu is the Kwanzaa feast, usually held on December 31, the sixth day; the daily greeting 'Habari Gani?' is answered with the name of that day's principle.

The first US Kwanzaa stamp followed a year after the first stamp for which holiday?

Hanukkah. Its 1996 stamp opened the Postal Service's Holiday Celebrations series, planned to honour a different cultural or ethnic holiday each year, and Kwanzaa was the second one chosen.

In which state did Gordon Granger announce the end of slavery on June 19, 1865?

Texas is where General Granger issued General Order No. 3 at Galveston on June 19, 1865, announcing that all enslaved people were free; in 1980 Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth a state holiday.

Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021, the first new one since which holiday was adopted in 1983?

Martin Luther King Jr. Day was signed into law by Ronald Reagan in 1983, yet it took until 2000 for all fifty states to observe it; Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth act on June 17, 2021.

Which colour of food and drink is traditional at Juneteenth gatherings?

Red foods and drinks, from strawberry soda to red velvet cake, are a Juneteenth tradition that goes back to the red soda water of the earliest celebrations, and the colour is often read as a sign of resilience and joy.

Which 'grandmother of Juneteenth' stood beside President Biden as he signed the 2021 holiday bill?

Opal Lee, the Fort Worth activist known as the 'grandmother of Juneteenth', began her symbolic walking campaign to Washington at 89 in 2016 and was at the White House when Biden signed the bill on June 17, 2021.

What does Imani, the seventh and final principle of Kwanzaa, mean?

Faith is the meaning of Imani, the seventh principle, observed on January 1; it asks celebrants to believe in their people, parents, teachers and leaders and in the righteousness of their struggle.

What is the Houston park that Black leaders bought in 1872 for Juneteenth celebrations called?

Emancipation Park. Early Juneteenth gatherings were sometimes pushed off public land, so freed people bought ground of their own; this ten-acre site was paid for by a fund-raising drive led by the Reverend Jack Yates.