British Christmas
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50 free British Christmas trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Christmas in Britain has its own rulebook. Dinner ends with a pudding that is set on fire, the table is laid with crackers that go bang, the afternoon belongs to a royal broadcast, and the theatres fill with pantomime audiences shouting at the stage. Many of these customs are younger than they look, and a surprising number were invented, imported or banned along the way. This quiz covers the food on the table, the carols and the chart race for the Christmas number one, the television specials that stopped the nation, and the history behind cards, trees and Boxing Day traditions. Some questions are gentle openers; others are properly hard, drawn from regional customs in Wales, Cornwall and Yorkshire. It is written for anyone planning a UK Christmas quiz night, a family round after lunch or a printable sheet for the office party, and every answer comes with a short explanation worth reading aloud.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which bird stars on British Christmas cards, perhaps because red-coated Victorian postmen shared its name as a nickname?
Robin
Robin is said to have been the nickname of Victorian postmen in their bright red jackets, so card artists drew the bird itself delivering the mail.
Q 02Which country has sent London's Trafalgar Square a Christmas tree every year since 1947 as thanks for wartime support?
Norway
Norway fells the spruce each November at a ceremony attended by the British ambassador and the Mayor of Oslo. The chosen tree is usually 50 to 60 years old and over 20 metres tall.
Q 03Which Rage Against the Machine track was 2009's UK Christmas number one after a Facebook protest against The X Factor?
Killing in the Name
Killing in the Name outsold the talent show winner's single after DJ Jon Morter and his wife Tracy urged Facebook users to buy it, ending a four-year run of X Factor Christmas chart-toppers.
Q 04Which strict Protestant group led the English Parliament that banned the celebration of Christmas in 1647?
Puritans
Puritans replaced the feast with a day of fasting, condemning Christmas as a popish festival with no biblical justification and a time of wasteful behaviour.
Q 05Which Christmas bake, now filled with dried fruit and spices, was originally made with meat such as mutton?
Mince pie
Mince pie fillings once included beef, mutton, tripe and even fish alongside the fruit, and recipes only gradually stopped calling for meat.
Q 06Which coin, also slipped into a bride's shoe for luck, was traditionally hidden in a British Christmas pudding?
Sixpence
Sixpence pieces took over from the vanishing silver threepence as the pudding coin, and whoever found one in their slice was promised good luck for the coming year.
Q 07In which Christmas pantomime is the dame Widow Twankey, a character named after a cheap grade of Chinese tea?
Aladdin
Aladdin's mother got the name in an 1861 play by H. J. Byron, after Twankay, a green tea whose old, ragged leaves hinted that she was past her best.
Q 08By the Met Office definition, what must happen on 25 December for the UK to record an official white Christmas?
One snowflake seen falling
One snowflake seen falling anywhere in the UK during the 24 hours is enough, even mixed with rain, while deep snow already lying from an earlier fall does not count.
Q 09At which Norfolk estate, bought for the future Edward VII, does the royal family traditionally gather for Christmas?
Sandringham
Sandringham Christmases were a tradition Queen Elizabeth II inherited from her father and grandfather, whereas Queen Victoria had held her celebrations at Windsor Castle.
Q 10Which tin of toffees and chocolates, a British Christmas staple, was launched by Mackintosh's of Halifax in 1936?
Quality Street
Quality Street was Harold Mackintosh's bid to make boxed chocolates cheap enough for working-class families to buy, built on the toffee his parents had sold from their Halifax shop.
Q 11Which supergroup, assembled by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, topped the UK chart at Christmas 1984 for famine relief?
Band Aid
Band Aid sold a million copies in a single week, making its record the fastest-selling single in UK chart history until Elton John's Candle in the Wind 1997.
Q 12Which Wolverhampton glam rock group beat Wizzard to the 1973 UK Christmas number one with Merry Xmas Everybody?
Slade
Slade recorded the festive hit in the late summer of 1973 at a New York studio, partway through a US tour, and it has been re-released in every decade since.
Q 13Which girl group matched the Beatles' then-record of three consecutive UK Christmas number ones between 1996 and 1998?
Spice Girls
Q 21What nickname, taken from a Book of Common Prayer collect, marks the day Britons traditionally make Christmas pudding?
Stir-up Sunday
Stir-up Sunday is the last one before Advent, and the prayer read in church that day made a handy reminder, since a pudding has to be cooked well ahead and reheated on Christmas Day.
Q 22Which spirit is traditionally warmed, poured over a British Christmas pudding and set alight before serving?
Brandy
Brandy turns up twice at the table, because the flaming pudding is often eaten with a hard sauce known as brandy butter, though custard and cream are common alternatives.
Q 23Which bird remained the main Christmas roast in England until turkey overtook it during the Victorian era?
Goose
Spice Girls member Melanie C went one better in 2012, collecting a fourth Christmas chart-topper as part of the Justice Collective charity single.
Q 14Which Queen single was UK Christmas number one in 1975 and again in 1991 after Freddie Mercury's death?
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody returned as a double A-side with These Are the Days of Our Lives and spent five more weeks at the top, helping make it the UK's third best-selling single.
Q 15Which royal, pictured beside a Windsor Castle tree in an 1848 magazine, made Christmas trees fashionable in Britain?
Prince Albert
Prince Albert got the credit after the Illustrated London News cover, although the German-born Queen Charlotte had put up a tree at a children's party back in 1800.
Q 16Which novelist's 1843 ghost story about a miser sold out its first edition by Christmas Eve, days after publication?
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in six weeks, finishing the final pages in early December, and thirteen editions had been released by the end of 1844.
Q 17Which sport did British and German soldiers reportedly play in no man's land during the Christmas truce of 1914?
Football
Football features in many accounts of the truce, including a letter printed in The Times on 1 January 1915, though some kick-abouts made do with a bully-beef tin for a ball.
Q 18Which king was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, weeks after his victory at the Battle of Hastings?
William I
William I, the Conqueror, marked another Christmas Day three years later by symbolically wearing his crown in the ruins of York.
Q 19Which English scientist was born at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire on Christmas Day 1642, by the old calendar?
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton's Christmas birthday depends on the calendar: England still used the Julian one, and by the Gregorian count now in use he was born on 4 January 1643.
Q 20In the British Christmas side dish pigs in blankets, small chipolata sausages are wrapped in what?
Bacon
Bacon-wrapped chipolatas, also nicknamed kilted sausages, topped a 2019 Tesco survey as the side dish most shoppers planned to serve with their Christmas dinner.
Goose was the common choice for centuries, while wealthy households of the 16th and 17th centuries sometimes dined on peacock and swan instead.
Q 24Which milk-based British side dish, a survivor of medieval cookery, is traditionally served with the Christmas turkey?
Bread sauce
Bread sauce is thickened with breadcrumbs, the way cooks of the Middle Ages thickened most sauces, and takes its flavour from onion, clove, bay leaf and nutmeg.
Q 25Which Nobel Prize-winning author scripted the first royal Christmas message, read on the radio in 1932?
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling wrote the words for George V, who had been hesitant about the untested medium of radio until a summer visit to the BBC reassured him.
Q 26Which British broadcaster has aired an Alternative Christmas Message since 1993, when Quentin Crisp gave the first?
Channel 4
Channel 4 started the tradition by accident: it was running a season of programmes on Christmas in New York and invited Crisp to give a rival to the monarch's address.
Q 27Which wordless 1982 animated film, based on a Raymond Briggs picture book, features the song Walking in the Air?
The Snowman
The Snowman was an immediate success when it first aired on 26 December 1982, and the song is the only break in a film that otherwise has no dialogue at all.
Q 28Which soap's 1986 Christmas Day episode drew more than 30 million viewers, the largest audience in its history?
EastEnders
EastEnders set the record when landlord Den Watts took revenge on his wife Angie, who had lied about having six months to live, by handing her divorce papers.
Q 29Which comedy double act left the BBC for Thames Television straight after their hugely watched 1977 Christmas show?
Morecambe and Wise
Morecambe and Wise took the Christmas special so seriously that in some years they made no series at all, so that writer, producer and stars could concentrate on it.
Q 30Which actor plays the British Prime Minister in Richard Curtis's 2003 Christmas romantic comedy Love Actually?
Hugh Grant
Hugh Grant disliked filming his character's dance scene, calling it excruciating, and Curtis had first conceived the storyline as a separate film of its own.