Boxing Day
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This Boxing Day trivia quiz has 47 free questions with answers and covers the day after Christmas from every angle: where the name came from (alms boxes, Christmas boxes and Pepys's diary), the 1871 Act that made it a bank holiday, Saint Stephen and the Wren Day parades of Ireland and the Isle of Man, Good King Wenceslas, and how the day is kept from South Africa's Day of Goodwill to Bermuda's Gombeys. There is a full round on Boxing Day sport, from Premier League derbies and the MCG Test to the Sydney to Hobart, the King George VI Chase and the World Juniors, plus the sales, the leftovers and the 2004 tsunami. It is written for anyone who has ever wondered why it is called Boxing Day. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer, so it works as a family round on the day itself. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How does the 1971 Act listing England's bank holidays describe Boxing Day?
As '26th December, if it be not a Sunday'
Schedule 1 of the 1971 Act lists the holiday as '26th December, if it be not a Sunday', substituting 27th December when the 25th or 26th is a Sunday; the Act never uses the name Boxing Day.
Q 02Boxing Day originated in which country?
The United Kingdom
The United Kingdom carried the custom across its empire, which is why 26 December is still a public holiday in Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Q 03Boxing Day was traditionally a day for doing what?
Giving gifts to the needy and to servants
Giving gifts to the needy and to servants: employers handed servants and tradesmen a 'Christmas box' of money or small presents on 26 December, their day off after working through Christmas Day.
Q 04One theory traces Boxing Day's name to which church box, opened the day after Christmas?
An alms box for the poor
An alms box for the poor: on this theory the clergy emptied it on 26 December and shared out the money, though the custom is older than the name and nobody knows the origin for sure.
Q 05Which diarist mentioned tradesmen collecting 'Christmas boxes' in an entry for 19 December 1663?
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys's diary for 19 December 1663 records paying his shoemaker's bill and giving 'something to the boys' box against Christmas', an early note of the Christmas-box custom.
Q 06Which Beatles film had its television premiere on BBC1 on Boxing Day 1967?
Magical Mystery Tour
Magical Mystery Tour was shot in colour, but BBC1 then broadcast only in black and white, so its psychedelic scenes went out in monochrome; a colour repeat followed on BBC2 on 5 January 1968.
Q 07Which monarch reigned when Boxing Day first became a bank holiday in England?
Victoria
Victoria was queen when the banker and MP Sir John Lubbock steered the Bank Holidays Act through in 1871; the new days off were nicknamed 'St Lubbock's Days' in his honour.
Q 08Boxing Day usually falls on the feast day of which figure, the first Christian martyr?
Stephen
Stephen was stoned to death in Jerusalem around AD 34, and his feast on 26 December is the 'feast of Stephen' on which Good King Wenceslas looks out in the carol.
Q 09The martyr honoured the day after Christmas was one of seven chosen to distribute food, holding what church office?
Deacon
Deacon: Acts lists him first among the seven, remembered as the first deacons, who were picked so the apostles could keep preaching; a young Saul, the future St Paul, watched his stoning.
Q 10In parts of Ireland and the Isle of Man, the day after Christmas is named for which traditionally hunted bird?
Wren
Wren: the 'king of all birds' was once hunted and paraded through the streets on a decorated pole, and today's wrenboys carry a replica bird instead.
Q 11On Boxing Day 1900, a relief crew found three keepers missing from which lighthouse?
Flannan Isles
Flannan Isles: the tender Hesperus reached Eilean Mòr on 26 December 1900 to find the lamp cleaned and ready to light but keepers James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald McArthur gone; no bodies were ever found.
Q 12In the carol 'Good King Wenceslas', what is the king doing on the feast after Christmas?
Taking alms to a poor peasant
The king is taking alms to a poor peasant: seeing a poor man gathering winter fuel, Wenceslas carries meat, wine and pine logs to him, his page treading in his footprints; John Mason Neale wrote the words in 1853.
Q 13The tune of 'Good King Wenceslas' comes from a 13th-century carol welcoming which season?
Q 21In Britain, football fixtures on Boxing Day were originally arranged against which kind of opponent?
Local rivals
Local rivals kept journeys short the day after Christmas; for decades clubs played on Christmas Day as well, so most teams turned out on consecutive days.
Q 22Australia's Boxing Day cricket Test is played in which city?
Melbourne
Melbourne's MCG made the Boxing Day Test an annual fixture only after Kerry Packer's Channel Nine won the cricket broadcast rights in 1979; before that just a handful of Tests there had included 26 December.
Q 23The Boxing Day Test's best-player medal honours which star of the 1868 Aboriginal tour of England?
Johnny Mullagh
Spring
Spring: the tune is 'Tempus adest floridum', roughly 'the flowering time is here'; Neale found it in Piae Cantiones, a songbook printed in 1582, and gave it his midwinter words in 1853.
Q 14In which Australian state is the 26 December holiday officially Proclamation Day, not Boxing Day?
South Australia
South Australia marks Governor Hindmarsh proclaiming the colony beside the Old Gum Tree on 28 December 1836; the holiday was later moved to the day after Christmas, though the ceremony at the tree is still usually held on the 28th.
Q 15What is the 26 December public holiday officially called in South Africa?
Day of Goodwill
Day of Goodwill: when Christmas falls on a Sunday, its replacement day off lands on the Day of Goodwill, so South Africa's president has declared 27 December an extra holiday, as in 2016 and 2022.
Q 16Which holiday's seven nights of candle-lighting begin each year on 26 December?
Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by the activist Maulana Karenga in the aftermath of the Watts riots in Los Angeles; each night a family lights a candle on the kinara and talks over one of seven principles.
Q 17What is Boxing Day called in French-speaking Canada?
Le Lendemain de Noël
Le Lendemain de Noël, literally 'the day after Christmas', is the name in Canada's federal labour code; in Quebec the law keeps most shops shut until 1 p.m. that day, so the sales start after lunch.
Q 18Which territory added Boxing Day to its statutory holidays in 2024?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong already closed banks and offices on 26 December, but the day joined the shorter statutory list that every employer must honour only in 2024, under a 2021 law adding five holidays by 2030.
Q 19Which costumed dancers traditionally perform across Bermuda on Boxing Day?
Gombeys
The Gombeys dance through Bermuda's neighbourhoods in painted masks and tall peacock-feather headdresses, driven by drums while a captain signals with a whistle and crowds follow from street to street.
Q 20Junkanoo, the masquerade parade held around Boxing Day, is most associated with which countries?
The Bahamas and Jamaica
The Bahamas and Jamaica: Nassau's Junkanoo parades fill Boxing Day and New Year's Day, and Jamaica has its own Jonkonnu; the most popular account traces it to enslaved Africans celebrating on their Christmas days off.
Johnny Mullagh made 1,698 runs on that tour, nine years before the first Test, and the team also gave boomerang-throwing displays at their matches; the medal dates from 2020.
Q 24Which famous yacht race starts on Boxing Day each year?
Sydney to Hobart
Sydney to Hobart began in 1945 when nine yachts planning a holiday cruise decided to race instead; a visiting Royal Navy captain, John Illingworth, won in Rani, and the course still runs about 630 nautical miles.
Q 25Which tech billionaire's yacht Sayonara finished first in the 1998 Boxing Day race in which six sailors died?
Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison's maxi Sayonara led 115 starters into a Bass Strait storm; five yachts sank, six sailors died, 55 were plucked from the sea and only 44 boats finished.
Q 26Britain's most prestigious Boxing Day horse race, the King George VI Chase, is run at which course?
Kempton Park
Kempton Park spent the Second World War as a prisoner-of-war camp; when racing returned in 1947, the chase first run in February 1937 was given its Boxing Day date.
Q 27Which horse won the King George VI Chase five times between 2006 and 2011?
Kauto Star
Kauto Star won four in a row from 2006, was well beaten by the younger Long Run next time, then at 11 years old beat him on Boxing Day 2011 to pass Desert Orchid's record of four wins.
Q 28Which 2004 law banned chasing foxes with dogs in England and Wales?
The Hunting Act
The Hunting Act 2004 banned hunting wild mammals with dogs in England and Wales from 18 February 2005; Boxing Day hunts continued as trail hunts following an artificial scent.
Q 29Which under-20 ice hockey tournament traditionally opens on Boxing Day and runs into early January?
The IIHF World Juniors
It has an outsized following in Canada, dating from the era when it was a rare chance to face Soviet Bloc players.
Q 30The Spengler Cup, which starts on Boxing Day, is played in which Swiss town?
Davos
Davos doctor Carl Spengler donated the trophy in 1923 to bring together nations divided by the First World War; Oxford University won that first tournament, and the host club HC Davos has staged it ever since.