A Christmas Memory
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40 free A Christmas Memory trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory is a staple of literature classes and one of the best-loved holiday stories in the language. In a few thousand words it follows a child of seven and the elderly relative who is his closest companion through one winter in the rural South, then quietly breaks the reader's heart. This quiz covers the story the way a class discussion would: what the pair make, buy and exchange, who shares the house with them, how the tale is told, and what happens after that final holiday. It also reaches beyond the text to the author's own early years in Alabama and to the celebrated adaptations for television and the theater. It suits students revising for a test on the story, teachers who want a ready multiple-choice check, and book clubs or families reading it aloud in December. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do the narrator and his elderly friend bake by the dozen each winter in A Christmas Memory?
Fruitcakes
Fruitcakes take the pair four days to bake, and most are mailed to people they have met once or never at all.
Q 02Which handmade present do the narrator and his friend make each other for their last Christmas in A Christmas Memory?
Kites
Kites are all the pair can afford, so each builds one in secret, though a few years earlier they had traded slingshots. They fly them together on Christmas Day.
Q 03How is the elderly woman in A Christmas Memory related to the seven-year-old boy who narrates the story?
His cousin
His cousin, a distant one in her sixties, is also his best friend, and Capote modeled her on the relative who helped raise him in Alabama.
Q 04Which president do the pair in A Christmas Memory mail a homemade gift every year without ever meeting him?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt is the most famous name on a mailing list made up mostly of strangers and people the pair have met only once or twice.
Q 05Which future novelist lived next door to young Truman Capote in the Alabama town behind A Christmas Memory?
Harper Lee
Harper Lee remained Capote's lifelong friend and put him into To Kill a Mockingbird as the character Dill.
Q 06Which ingredient must the pair in A Christmas Memory buy illegally because of Prohibition?
Whiskey
Whiskey could not be sold legally, so the two carry a purse of hoarded pennies to a dive whose owner has a fearsome reputation.
Q 07Where is the young narrator of A Christmas Memory sent the year after his last Christmas with his friend?
Military school
Military school separates them for good: the two write constantly, but her mind fails and she dies before they can meet again.
Q 08Random House reissued A Christmas Memory in 1966 to ride the success of which Truman Capote bestseller?
In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood had just made Capote a celebrity, and the boxed holiday edition, not the first printing a decade earlier, made the story a classic.
Q 09Which nickname does the friend give the narrator of A Christmas Memory, whose real name is never told?
Buddy
Buddy is the only name readers ever learn for him, and Capote said the boy was a portrait of himself.
Q 10What is the name of the little rat terrier who goes everywhere with the pair in A Christmas Memory?
Queenie
Queenie trots along on the nut-gathering trip, and news of her death eventually reaches the narrator in one of his friend's letters.
Q 11Which nuts do the narrator and his friend gather from a neighbor's orchard floor in A Christmas Memory?
Pecans
Pecans cost the pair nothing because they pick up only what the harvest left on the ground, then shell them by firelight that evening.
Q 12Which present does the elderly friend in A Christmas Memory long to buy the narrator but cannot afford?
A bicycle
A bicycle is as far out of reach as the knife, radio and chocolate-covered cherries he would like to buy her, so they make their presents instead.
Q 13Why do two angry relatives scold the narrator's friend once the baking is finished in A Christmas Memory?
She let the boy drink
Q 21The friend in A Christmas Memory has never eaten in a restaurant, but which tiny birds can she tame?
Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds are one item on the boy's admiring list of her talents, beside telling chilling ghost stories and mixing home cures.
Q 22Why has the narrator's elderly friend in A Christmas Memory never once been to see a movie?
To save her eyesight
To save her eyesight for the day she meets God is her reason, so the boy goes alone each Saturday and tells her the plots afterward.
Q 23The narrator of A Christmas Memory spends each Saturday at the movies, which inspire him to become what?
A tap dancer
She let the boy drink the last of the bottle with her. After the scolding she cries in her room until he cheers her with talk of finding a tree.
Q 14Which Christmas present does the family dog in A Christmas Memory receive every single year?
A bone
A bone is her gift every year, and on the last Christmas of the story she is busy burying it in the pasture while the two friends talk.
Q 15Which national crisis explains the poverty of the household in Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory?
The Great Depression
The Great Depression is never named in the story, but its early-1930s setting shows in the coins the pair hoard: their whole baking fund comes to about thirteen dollars.
Q 16From which point of view is A Christmas Memory told, so readers never hear the friend's thoughts?
First person
First person narration lets an adult look back through a seven-year-old's eyes, which is why even the stern relatives go unnamed.
Q 17In which month does A Christmas Memory open, as the friend declares that the baking season has arrived?
November
November brings the ritual every year, and after the two are parted she still posts him the best of each batch until she grows too frail.
Q 18What do the pair in A Christmas Memory push to the orchard to carry home their nut harvest?
An old baby carriage
An old baby carriage, bought for the boy when he was born, is their cart, and filling it with fallen nuts takes three hours.
Q 19What does the superstitious friend in A Christmas Memory do on the thirteenth day of every month?
Stays in bed
Stays in bed is her rule for that date, and the pair once threw a penny out of the window rather than keep exactly thirteen dollars.
Q 20What does the fearsome bootlegger Haha Jones do when the pair in A Christmas Memory try to pay him?
Gives their money back
Gives their money back is the surprise: the scarred giant, said never to smile, asks only for a share of their baking instead.
A tap dancer is his plan, paid for by the one regular withdrawal from the pair's savings: a dime a week for his ticket.
Q 24In A Christmas Memory, which scraps supply the tinfoil for the angels the pair make for their tree?
Candy wrappers
Candy wrappers become angels that hang beside paper cutouts of fruit and animals and a few old treasures fetched from the attic.
Q 25Which present from the stern relatives leaves the narrator of A Christmas Memory bitterly let down?
A religious magazine
A religious magazine for children, sent by subscription, arrives with hand-me-down clothes, and the boy admits the gift makes him furious.
Q 26Which fruit, one of the friend's own Christmas presents, do the pair share outdoors in A Christmas Memory?
Oranges
Oranges, a sack of satsumas, are her best present that year, and she shares them with the boy on what proves to be their last Christmas together.
Q 27What does the friend in A Christmas Memory refuse to do with the pine she cuts for Christmas?
Sell it to a passerby
Sell it to a passerby she will not: told she could always cut another, she answers that no two things are ever the same.
Q 28The narrator's nickname in A Christmas Memory honors whom from his elderly friend's own past?
A girlhood playmate
A girlhood playmate, who died in the 1880s, lent him the name, and near the end her failing mind can no longer tell the two apart.
Q 29How does the narrator of A Christmas Memory first know that his elderly friend has died?
He simply senses it
He simply senses it before any message can reach him, a sign of how close the two remained after years of separation.
Q 30Which public radio show aired Capote's own 1959 recording of A Christmas Memory in 2003?
This American Life
This American Life played a shortened cut of the LP that Capote had recorded three years after the story first appeared.