Christmas Carols History Trivia
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196 free Christmas Carols History trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 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 196 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
Oberndorf, where Silent Night was first sung at St Nicholas church in 1818, lies about 17 km north of Salzburg; the flood-damaged church was later replaced by the Silent Night Chapel.
Q 02In Good King Wenceslas, whom does the king trudge through the snow to help?
A poor peasant
The king spots a poor peasant gathering winter fuel and sets out with flesh, wine and pine logs; his page keeps going by treading in the king's footprints.
Q 03Who wrote the words to Silent Night, two years before it was set to music?
Joseph Mohr
Joseph Mohr, a young assistant priest, wrote the six-verse poem in 1816; a manuscript in his own hand, found in 1995, is the earliest known copy of the carol.
Q 04Silent Night's tune was long credited to famous composers such as Haydn, Mozart and whom?
Beethoven
With the original manuscript lost, the melody was variously credited to Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven; the real composer was Franz Xaver Gruber, a village schoolmaster and organist.
Q 05In 2011 Silent Night was declared an intangible cultural heritage by which organisation?
UNESCO
The Austrian Commission for UNESCO added Silent Night to its national inventory of intangible cultural heritage in March 2011, honouring the carol first sung at Oberndorf in 1818.
Q 06John Freeman Young, who wrote the standard English Silent Night in 1859, was a priest in which city?
New York
John Freeman Young was an Episcopal priest at Trinity Church in New York when he published his three-verse English Silent Night in 1859; he later became Bishop of Florida.
Q 07Placide Cappeau reportedly composed the poem behind O Holy Night in 1847 while travelling how?
Stagecoach
Legend says Placide Cappeau, a Roquemaure wine merchant, drafted Minuit, chrétiens in a stagecoach on the road to Paris after his parish priest asked him for a Christmas poem.
Q 08Which composer of the ballet Giselle set O Holy Night to music within days?
Adolphe Adam
Adolphe Adam, composer of the 1841 ballet Giselle, set Cappeau's poem in a few days in 1847; the result, Cantique de Noël, was first sung at Midnight Mass in Roquemaure.
Q 09John Sullivan Dwight, writer of the 1855 English O Holy Night, was drawn to it as what?
An abolitionist
Dwight, a Boston music critic and abolitionist, rendered the verse 'Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother', which struck a chord in the antislavery North.
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
In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge chases off a boy who sings 'God rest you merry, gentlemen' at his keyhole; George Eliot's Silas Marner also quotes the carol.
Q 13John Francis Wade's 1751 manuscript at Stonyhurst College preserves which Christmas hymn?
Adeste Fideles
Q 21Which 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 22Edmund Sears, who wrote It Came Upon the Midnight Clear in 1849, was a pastor of which denomination?
Unitarian
Edmund Hamilton Sears was a Unitarian pastor in Wayland, Massachusetts, when he wrote the five verses in 1849; US congregations sing Richard Storrs Willis's 1850 tune 'Carol', British ones Arthur Sullivan's 'Noel'.
Q 23Angels We Have Heard on High is an English version of a traditional carol from which country?
France
Adeste Fideles, sung in English as O Come, All Ye Faithful, survives in Wade's 1751 manuscript at Stonyhurst College; authorship has also been claimed for John Reading and King John IV of Portugal.
Q 14Which priest's 1841 translation became the English carol 'O Come All Ye Faithful'?
Frederick Oakeley
Frederick Oakeley, then an Anglican at London's Margaret Chapel, made the translation in 1841 and became a Roman Catholic in 1845; his opening 'Ye faithful, approach ye' was revised to 'O come, all ye faithful' in 1852.
Q 15The real Wenceslas of Good King Wenceslas was a tenth-century duke of which land?
Bohemia
Saint Wenceslaus I ruled as Duke of Bohemia from about 921 until his murder in 935 and became the Czech patron saint; the carol's 'good king' is a later promotion.
Q 16Good King Wenceslas is set to a 13th-century tune originally about which season?
Spring
The tune is Tempus adest floridum, 'the time of flowers is here', a 13th-century spring song that J. M. Neale paired with his new Wenceslas words in 1853.
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 19We Three Kings (1857) is described as the first widely popular Christmas carol written in which country?
America
John Henry Hopkins Jr. wrote We Three Kings for a seminary Christmas pageant, giving each of the three kings a solo verse; it is counted the first widely popular Christmas carol written in America.
Q 20Phillips Brooks wrote O Little Town of Bethlehem after visiting Bethlehem itself in which year?
1865
Brooks rode from Jerusalem to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve 1865; three years later, in 1868, his organist Lewis Redner wrote the tune 'St. Louis' overnight for a Sunday-school service.
Les Anges dans nos campagnes was paraphrased by James Chadwick; the tune is called 'Gloria'.
Q 24In 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 25Which 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 26The Coventry Carol, a lullaby sung by mothers, refers to which biblical event?
The Massacre of the Innocents
The mothers of Bethlehem sing 'Lully, lullay' to babies doomed by Herod's Massacre of the Innocents (Matthew 2); the carol's closing major chord is a textbook Picardy third.
Q 27Cecil Frances Alexander's 1848 hymnbook, with Once in Royal David's City, was aimed at whom?
Little children
Alexander's Hymns for Little Children (1848) taught the Creed to the young, this hymn illustrating 'born of the Virgin Mary'; Henry Gauntlett's tune Irby followed in 1849.
Q 28At King's College Cambridge, who sings the first verse of Once in Royal David's City on Christmas Eve?
A solo boy chorister
A solo boy chorister sings the first verse unaccompanied; by tradition the director of music chooses him only seconds before the service begins, so no boy has time to get nervous.
Q 29Away 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).
Q 30Joy to the World was written in 1719 by which English hymn-writer as a paraphrase of Psalm 98?
Isaac Watts
Isaac Watts published the text in 1719, paraphrasing Psalm 98's 'make a joyful noise unto the Lord'; the tune Antioch is Lowell Mason's 1848 arrangement of a melody credited to Handel.