50 free Black Holiday trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Black holiday trivia is its own canon: the films families rewatch every December (This Christmas, The Best Man Holiday, Almost Christmas, The Preacher's Wife, Friday After Next, Jingle Jangle), the songs that soundtrack them (Donny Hathaway's This Christmas, the Temptations' Silent Night, the Jackson 5 Christmas Album, Run-DMC's Christmas in Hollis, Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Boyz II Men, Whitney Houston), and the holidays created by and for Black Americans, Kwanzaa and Juneteenth. This quiz covers all three, with questions on casts and directors, chart facts and songwriters, the seven principles and the kinara, and the history of June 19th. The 46 Black holiday trivia questions run from easy crowd-pleasers for a family gathering to genuinely hard ones about release dates and songwriting credits, so it works for a Christmas dinner, a Kwanzaa celebration or a Juneteenth cookout. Every answer has been checked against documented film, music and historical sources rather than another trivia list.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The 2007 film This Christmas is named after a 1970 song by which soul singer?
Donny Hathaway
Loretta Devine plays matriarch Ma'Dere, with Idris Elba and Regina King among her six children.
Q 02Which singer plays 'Baby' Whitfield, the youngest sibling with a secret singing talent?
Chris Brown
The Whitfields run a family dry-cleaning business that becomes the source of the film's arguments.
Q 03Who wrote and directed The Best Man Holiday, the 2013 sequel to The Best Man?
Malcolm D. Lee
It made $72.8 million on a $17 million budget with the entire original cast returning.
Q 04The Best Man Holiday was shot in which city in 2013?
Toronto
Morris Chestnut and Terrence Howard both earned NAACP Image Award nominations for it.
Q 05Almost Christmas (2016) stars Danny Glover as a widower hosting his family. Who wrote and directed it?
David E. Talbert
Talbert later made the Netflix musical Jingle Jangle.
Q 06In Almost Christmas, Danny Glover's Walter Meyers is a retired what?
Automotive engineer
He gathers his four grown children for their first holiday since his wife Grace died.
Q 07The Preacher's Wife (1996) remakes a 1947 Cary Grant film about an angel helping which clergyman?
A bishop
Denzel Washington plays the angel Dudley opposite Whitney Houston and Courtney B. Vance.
Q 08Who directed The Preacher's Wife?
Penny Marshall
The Laverne & Shirley star had already directed Big and A League of Their Own.
Q 09Roughly how many copies has Whitney Houston's The Preacher's Wife soundtrack, the best-selling gospel album, sold?
6 million
Houston was paid $10 million for the role, then a record for a Black actress.
Q 10In Last Holiday (2006), Queen Latifah's Georgia Byrd works in which department of a New Orleans store?
Cookware
The role was originally written for John Candy before his death.
Q 11Which TV chef's recipes does Georgia Byrd lovingly recreate in Last Holiday?
Emeril Lagasse
She keeps a scrapbook of dreams labelled 'Possibilities'.
Q 12In Friday After Next, a robber dressed as whom breaks into Craig and Day-Day's apartment?
Santa Claus
He makes off with the presents and the rent money owed to landlady Ms. Pearly.
Q 13What jobs do Craig and Day-Day take on Christmas Eve in Friday After Next?
Security guards
Ice Cube wrote the film, the third in the Friday trilogy; Mike Epps plays two roles.
Q 21In which city was 'This Christmas' recorded in the autumn of 1970?
Chicago
It only became a standard after its 1991 inclusion on the reissued Soul Christmas compilation.
Q 22Run-DMC's 1987 holiday single first appeared on which charity compilation?
A Very Special Christmas
The album benefited the Special Olympics; the group initially refused until publicist Bill Adler suggested the song idea.
Q 23'Christmas in Hollis' samples 'Back Door Santa', a 1968 holiday song by which soul singer?
Clarence Carter
Hollis is the Queens neighbourhood where the group grew up.
Q 14Netflix's 2020 musical Jingle Jangle stars Forest Whitaker as which toymaker?
Jeronicus
The film earned 10 NAACP Image Award nominations, tying the record then held by Black Panther and The Best Man.
Q 15Which network premiered A Diva's Christmas Carol (2000), with Vanessa L. Williams as Ebony Scrooge?
VH1
Chilli from TLC and Kathy Griffin co-star; Ebony was once part of a 1980s trio called Desire.
Q 16Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas (2013) sends Madea to a fictional town in which state?
Alabama
Bucktussle's Christmas is threatened by financial trouble over a new dam; Larry the Cable Guy co-stars.
Q 17The 2013 film Black Nativity, with Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett, is based on a 1961 play by whom?
Langston Hughes
Kasi Lemmons directed; Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige and Nas are also in the cast.
Q 18Which rapper-actor plays J-Jizzy in The Perfect Holiday (2007), narrated by Queen Latifah?
Charlie Murphy
Morris Chestnut plays a songwriter trying to get his Christmas album to the rapper.
Q 19Who plays the drag queen title role in Showtime's Holiday Heart (2000)?
Ving Rhames
Alfre Woodard earned a Golden Globe nomination as the struggling mother Wanda.
Q 20'This Christmas' was co-written by its singer and which lyricist?
Nadine McKinnor
Guitarist Phil Upchurch called it 'absolutely the premiere holiday song written by an African American'.
Q 24Stevie Wonder's first Christmas album, Someday at Christmas, was released in which year?
1967
The title track had come out as a single a year earlier and reached number 24 on Billboard's Christmas Singles chart.
Q 25Which blues singer and pianist wrote and recorded 'Please Come Home for Christmas' in 1960?
Charles Brown
It topped Billboard's Christmas Singles chart in 1972; the Eagles' 1978 cover reached the Hot 100 top 20.
Q 26Johnny Moore's Three Blazers recorded the 1947 original of which R&B holiday standard?
Merry Christmas Baby
The Blazers' pianist-vocalist later wrote 'Please Come Home for Christmas' as a solo artist.
Q 27Eartha Kitt's 'Santa Baby' was the best-selling Christmas song of which year?
1953
Kitt famously disliked Madonna's later cover of it.
Q 28Nat King Cole first recorded 'The Christmas Song' in which year?
1946
His 1961 stereo version is considered definitive and is in the National Recording Registry.
Q 29'The Christmas Song' was written during a heatwave in July 1945 by Robert Wells and which singer?
Mel Tormé
They wrote it in about 40 minutes trying to 'stay cool by thinking cool'.
Q 30Which single was released from The Jackson 5 Christmas Album (1970)?
Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
Holiday albums were barred from the main Billboard 200 between 1963 and 1973.