150 free Christmas Carols History trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Christmas carols history trivia quiz is about where the carols came from: the Austrian priest and schoolmaster behind Silent Night, the French wine merchant who wrote O Holy Night on a stagecoach, the Methodist hymn that borrowed a Mendelssohn tune written for a printing-press anniversary, the Welsh New Year's Eve song that became Deck the Halls, and the Ukrainian spring chant that turned into Carol of the Bells. It also covers the tradition itself: Francis of Assisi and the first vernacular carols, the Puritan years, wassailing, the Victorian collectors who saved the old songs, and the Cornish bishop who invented Nine Lessons and Carols to get people out of the pub. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has sung in a school concert, a third are medium, and the rest are for choristers, organists and people who own the Oxford Book of Carols. It works as a church social round, a family quiz between courses or a solo Advent challenge. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 150 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Silent Night was first performed on Christmas Eve 1818 in a village church near which Austrian city?
Salzburg
The church in Oberndorf was later destroyed by repeated flooding and replaced with the Silent-Night-Chapel.
Q 02In Good King Wenceslas, whom does the king trudge through the snow to help?
A poor peasant
His page nearly gives up in the cold but keeps going by stepping in the king's footprints.
Q 03Who wrote the words to Silent Night, two years before it was set to music?
Joseph Mohr
The young priest wrote the poem in 1816 at Mariapfarr, and a manuscript in his own hand was only discovered in 1995.
Q 04Silent Night's tune was long credited to famous composers such as Haydn, Mozart and whom?
Schubert
The real composer was Franz Xaver Gruber, a village schoolmaster and organist, who wrote it for guitar accompaniment.
Q 05In 2011 Silent Night was declared an intangible cultural heritage by which organisation?
UNESCO
With more than 137,000 known recordings, it is among the most-recorded songs of any kind.
Q 06John Freeman Young, who wrote the standard English Silent Night in 1859, was a priest in which city?
New York
He translated only three of Mohr's original six verses; a 1998 retranslation restored the 'holy infant with curly hair'.
Q 07Placide Cappeau reportedly composed the poem behind O Holy Night in 1847 while travelling how?
Stagecoach
A local priest had asked him for a new text for Midnight Mass after the church's stained glass was restored.
Q 08Which composer of the ballet Giselle set O Holy Night to music within days?
Adolphe Adam
Cappeau called the finished piece Cantique de Noël; false rumours that Adam was Jewish were later used to attack the carol.
Q 09John Sullivan Dwight wrote the 1855 English version of O Holy Night. He admired its message because he was what?
An abolitionist
The verse about breaking chains for the enslaved resonated during the American Civil War; Dwight altered the French text much more than a translation required.
Q 10Wesley's original 1739 opening line for Hark! The Herald Angels Sing mentioned the 'welkin', meaning what?
The sky
George Whitefield rewrote the couplet into the version sung today; Wesley had wanted the words sung to his Easter tune.
Q 11Mendelssohn wrote the tune now used for Hark! The Herald Angels Sing to celebrate the 400th anniversary of what?
The printing press
William Hayman Cummings, organist at Waltham Abbey, fitted Wesley's words to the Festgesang in 1855.
Q 12God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen is name-checked in which 1843 novella?
A Christmas Carol
Dickens has Scrooge threaten a boy singing it; the carol is also quoted in George Eliot's Silas Marner.
Q 13The Latin original of O Come, All Ye Faithful is known by what title?
Adeste Fideles
It has been credited to John Francis Wade, John Reading, King John IV of Portugal and anonymous monks; Wade's 1751 manuscript is at Stonyhurst College.
Q 21Phillips Brooks wrote O Little Town of Bethlehem after visiting Bethlehem itself in which year?
1865
Three years later his organist Lewis Redner wrote the tune 'St. Louis' in great haste for a Sunday-school service.
Q 22Which composer collected 'Forest Green', the British tune for O Little Town of Bethlehem?
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Americans sing it to Redner's 'St. Louis' instead; the same composer took down the Sussex Carol from a singer near Horsham.
Q 23Edmund Sears, who wrote It Came Upon the Midnight Clear in 1849, was a pastor of which denomination?
Unitarian
Americans sing it to Richard Storrs Willis's tune, while Commonwealth countries use an Arthur Sullivan adaptation called 'Noel'.
Q 14Which English Catholic priest translated the Latin carol into 'O Come All Ye Faithful' in 1841?
Frederick Oakeley
The original four verses were later extended to eight and translated into many languages.
Q 15The real Wenceslas of Good King Wenceslas was a tenth-century duke of which land?
Bohemia
Saint Wenceslaus I lived from about 907 to 935; his feast-day journey in the carol takes place on St Stephen's Day.
Q 16Good King Wenceslas is set to a 13th-century tune originally about which season?
Spring
Tempus adest floridum came from the 1582 Finnish collection Piae Cantiones, which also supplied Gaudete and Personent hodie.
Q 17The First Nowell is a traditional English carol most likely from which county?
Cornwall
It reached a wide audience through an 1833 antiquarian collection, Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern.
Q 18The melody of Deck the Halls comes from Nos Galan, a traditional carol from which country?
Wales
Nos Galan means New Year's Eve; the English words were added by the Scottish musician Thomas Oliphant in 1862.
Q 19Until about 1892, how did the published title of Deck the Halls differ from today's?
'Hall' was singular
The 'fa la la' refrain in the Welsh original was an instrumental flourish, likely for harp.
Q 20We Three Kings (1857) is described as the first widely popular Christmas carol written in which country?
America
John Henry Hopkins Jr. wrote it for a New York pageant while rector in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, giving each king a solo verse.
Q 24Angels We Have Heard on High is an English version of a traditional carol from which country?
France
Les Anges dans nos campagnes was paraphrased by James Chadwick; the tune is called 'Gloria'.
Q 25In the Bleak Midwinter began as a poem by which Victorian poet, published in Scribner's Monthly in 1872?
Christina Rossetti
Its two famous settings are by the composer of The Planets and by Harold Darke; Darke's was voted the best carol of all in a 2008 poll of choirmasters.
Q 26Which composer of The Planets wrote the congregational tune 'Cranham' for In the Bleak Midwinter?
Gustav Holst
It appeared in the 1906 English Hymnal; Darke's 1909 anthem is the version choirs prefer.
Q 27The Coventry Carol, a lullaby sung by mothers, refers to which biblical event?
The Massacre of the Innocents
It comes from a 16th-century mystery play, the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, and contains a textbook Picardy third.
Q 28Cecil Frances Alexander's 1848 hymnbook, with Once in Royal David's City, was aimed at whom?
Little children
Organist Henry Gauntlett set it to music a year later; since 1919 it has opened the King's College Christmas Eve service.
Q 29At King's College Cambridge, who sings the first verse of Once in Royal David's City on Christmas Eve?
A solo boy chorister
By tradition the soloist is picked moments before the broadcast, whichever boy's voice is strongest that day.
Q 30Away in a Manger was long wrongly attributed to which German religious reformer?
Martin Luther
It is now thought to be wholly American, with settings by James Ramsey Murray (1887) and William J. Kirkpatrick (1895).