Kids Christmas
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146 free Kids Christmas trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Kids Christmas trivia questions with answers. Christmas trivia for kids works best when the questions are winnable. These 40 are pitched for children and families: the films they already know, the reindeer with the famous nose, what naughty children traditionally find in their stocking, and a few odd true facts to hand back at the dinner table. The second half is Christmas Bible trivia for kids: where Jesus was born, which angel visited Mary, who the shepherds met, what the wise men carried and why the family fled to Egypt. It suits a Sunday school class, a church Christmas party or a family quiz on Christmas Eve, and every question is one an 8-to-12-year-old can get right. Every answer is checked against a cited source, and each one comes with a short explanation so it teaches something on the way past.
30 of 146 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What flavour is a traditional striped candy cane?
Peppermint
Peppermint is the classic flavour; the name 'candy cane' first turns up in a magazine story of 1866, and a popular legend says the sticks were first handed out to keep children quiet in church.
Q 02Who wrote How the Grinch Stole Christmas!?
Dr. Seuss
Dr. Seuss was Theodor Geisel, who said the Grinch was himself: he caught a very Grinchish face in the mirror the morning after Christmas 1956 and had the story mostly written within weeks.
Q 03Which city does the McCallister family fly to at the start of Home Alone?
Paris
Paris was the plan, but a power cut overnight reset the alarm clocks, the family overslept, and in the scramble for the airport nobody noticed Kevin was still up in the attic.
Q 04What is the town where the Whos live called?
Whoville
Whoville first appeared in Horton Hears a Who!, three years before the Grinch story: there the whole town sits on a speck of dust, and an elephant has to guard it from animals who cannot hear the Whos.
Q 05Which actor plays Buddy in the film Elf?
Will Ferrell
Will Ferrell's Buddy ends up saving Christmas: when Santa's sleigh loses power in Central Park, a crowd of New Yorkers starts singing, and their Christmas spirit gets it flying again.
Q 06What is the name of the Grinch's dog?
Max
Max is the Grinch's dog, disguised as a reindeer for the Christmas Eve raid and made to pull a sleigh piled high with stolen presents.
Q 07What do badly behaved children traditionally find in their stocking?
A lump of coal
A lump of coal is the old threat, but Italy turned it into a treat: the 'coal' that children find in their stockings there is sugar candy dyed black.
Q 08In the song, what brings Frosty the Snowman to life?
An old silk hat
An old silk hat sets Frosty dancing in the 1950 song, which its two writers pitched to Gene Autry as a follow-up to the reindeer song that had been his big hit the Christmas before.
Q 09In Home Alone, what are the two burglars called?
Harry and Marv
Harry and Marv call themselves the Wet Bandits because Marv leaves the taps running in every house they rob, a calling card that lets the police pin every burglary on them.
Q 10Boxing Day is celebrated on which date?
26 December
Boxing Day falls on 26 December; its name is traced either to church alms boxes opened for the poor that day or to the Christmas boxes of gifts that employers gave their servants.
Q 11How many little doors does a standard Advent calendar have?
24
A standard Advent calendar has 24 doors, one for each day from 1 December to Christmas Eve, although the church season of Advent itself begins on a Sunday that can fall in late November.
Q 12Decorated gingerbread houses are usually linked to which fairy tale?
Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel, published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812, has a witch's house built of bread, cake and sugar; German bakers are said to have begun making gingerbread houses after it appeared.
Q 13In Elf, which food group joins candy, candy canes and candy corn?
Syrup
Syrup is the fourth elf food group, and Buddy lives by it: served spaghetti at the family dinner table, he asks for the maple syrup and then produces a bottle of his own.
Q 21Advent calendars were first used by Lutherans in which country?
Germany
Germany's Protestants began by chalking a line on the door for each December day and rubbing one out every morning; printed calendars with pictures followed in the early 1900s.
Q 22Which American retailer first handed out the story of the red-nosed reindeer in 1939?
Montgomery Ward
Montgomery Ward had been buying colouring books to give away each Christmas and asked its copywriter Robert L. May for a story of its own to save money; 2.4 million copies went out that first year.
Q 23What was the song "Jingle Bells" originally called?
The One Horse Open Sleigh
Q 14Who sang the best-known recording of "White Christmas"?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby first sang it on his radio show on Christmas Day 1941; the 1942 record was pressed so often that the master wore out, so the version usually heard today is his 1947 remake.
Q 15Which poem opens with the line "Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house"?
A Visit from St. Nicholas
A Visit from St. Nicholas ran unsigned in a Troy, New York, newspaper in 1823; Clement Clarke Moore claimed it only years later, and some scholars think Henry Livingston Jr. wrote it.
Q 16In which country was the carol "Silent Night" first performed?
Austria
Austria's village of Oberndorf heard it first, at Christmas Eve mass in 1818: the priest Joseph Mohr had asked Franz Gruber to set his poem for guitar, and the two men sang it themselves.
Q 17The poinsettia, a common Christmas plant, grows wild in which country?
Mexico
Mexico calls the plant flor de Nochebuena, the Christmas Eve flower; its English name honours Joel Poinsett, the first US envoy to Mexico, who sent plants home in the 1820s.
Q 18In which country did a 1970s advertising campaign turn fried chicken into a Christmas custom?
Japan
Japan had few Christmas customs of its own when KFC's 1974 'Kentucky for Christmas' campaign sold a bucket of fried chicken as the stand-in for a turkey dinner; millions of families now order one.
Q 19Saint Nicholas, the real bishop behind Santa Claus, served a city in which modern country?
Turkey
Turkey's south coast was home to Myra, where tradition makes Nicholas bishop in the 300s; in 1087 Italian sailors carried his bones off to Bari, where they are still kept.
Q 20Which royal couple helped make Christmas trees fashionable in Britain?
Victoria and Albert
Victoria and Albert popularised the tree: an 1848 Illustrated London News engraving of the royal family around a decorated tree at Windsor made it a must-have at home.
The One Horse Open Sleigh was the title when James Pierpont's song was first performed, in a Boston theatre in September 1857; it had no connection to Christmas and was tied to the holiday only later.
Q 24In Alpine folklore, which horned figure deals with badly behaved children?
Krampus
Krampus walks beside Saint Nicholas on the night of 5 December: the saint rewards good children with small gifts, while his horned companion rattles chains and swats the naughty with birch rods.
Q 25In which town was Jesus born?
Bethlehem
Bethlehem lies about six miles south of Jerusalem and was also the birthplace of King David, which is why the Bible calls it the city of David.
Q 26Which angel visited Mary to tell her she would have a son?
Gabriel
The angel Gabriel brought the news to Mary in Luke's Gospel; his greeting, 'Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee', became the opening of the Hail Mary prayer.
Q 27Because there was nowhere for the family to stay, where was the newborn baby Jesus laid?
In a manger
In a manger, an animals' feeding trough, is where Luke says the baby was laid; that one word is why nativity scenes are set in a stable, which the Gospel never mentions.
Q 28In the Christmas story, an angel announced the birth of Jesus to which group of people?
Shepherds
Luke's Gospel says shepherds watching their flocks by night were told by an angel to look for a baby wrapped in cloths, as a host of angels sang 'Glory to God in the highest'.
Q 29What three gifts did the wise men bring to the baby Jesus?
Gold, frankincense and myrrh
Gold, frankincense and myrrh are the only count in the story: Matthew never says how many wise men came, and the idea that there were three of them grew from the three gifts.
Q 30What did the wise men from the East follow to find the newborn king?
A star
Matthew's Gospel says the wise men followed a star that went ahead of them and stopped over the place where the child was; astronomers have suggested a comet or a conjunction of planets.