Christmas Songs
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156 free Christmas Songs trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
50 free Christmas songs trivia questions with answers. From Bing Crosby's White Christmas to Mariah Carey's holiday anthem, Christmas songs are the soundtrack of the season. This quiz covers classic carols, pop Christmas hits, novelty favorites, the songwriters behind them, chart records, and surprising origins. Whether you belt out carols or just hear them in every store from November onward, find out how much you really know about the music of Christmas.
30 of 156 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bing Crosby introduced the best-selling single of all time in which 1942 musical film, built around Irving Berlin songs?
Holiday Inn
Holiday Inn gave the world 'White Christmas', which Crosby cut in 18 minutes in May 1942; it has since sold an estimated 50 million physical copies worldwide.
Q 02Which singing cowboy made the first recording of "Frosty the Snowman", in 1950?
Gene Autry
Gene Autry recorded the first version of 'Frosty the Snowman' in 1950 as a follow-up to his earlier smash 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'; Jimmy Durante cut a rival version the same year.
Q 03Which retailer's 1939 promotional story introduced the most famous reindeer of all?
Montgomery Ward
Montgomery Ward copywriter Robert L. May created Rudolph for the chain's 1939 giveaway booklet, and about 2.4 million copies were handed out that first season; the hit song came years later.
Q 04Who wrote the lyrics to "Santa Baby" with composer Philip Springer in 1953?
Joan Javits
Joan Javits, niece of Senator Jacob Javits, wrote the lyrics to 'Santa Baby' with composer Philip Springer in 1953; the song is a wish list of a sable, a yacht and the deed to a platinum mine.
Q 05Which husband-and-wife act had the original 1979 recording of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"?
Elmo and Patsy
Elmo and Patsy, veterinarian Elmo Shropshire and his wife Patsy Trigg, self-released 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer' on their own Oink Records label in 1979, and it was a San Francisco-area hit before going national.
Q 06"Last Christmas" was performed by which pop duo?
Wham!
"Last Christmas" was released by Wham! (George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley) in 1984. Written by George Michael, it has become one of the best-selling Christmas singles worldwide.
Q 07Which lyricist wrote "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" during a July 1945 Hollywood heatwave?
Sammy Cahn
Jule Styne supplied the music. The lyric never once mentions the holiday it is now played for.
Q 08"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was originally recorded by which singer in 1958?
Brenda Lee
Brenda Lee was 13 when she recorded 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' for Decca in 1958; the single reached the Billboard Hot 100 top 20 in December 1960 after her pop breakthrough.
Q 09In which year did Mariah Carey's 1994 holiday single first top the Billboard Hot 100?
2019
It took 25 years, and when it finally went to number one it did so on 45.6 million streams in a single week.
Q 10Which LP is the best-selling Christmas album of all time worldwide?
Elvis' Christmas Album
Elvis' Christmas Album, released by RCA in October 1957, has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling Christmas album ever released.
Q 11Which winter standard was published in 1857 under the title "The One Horse Open Sleigh"?
Jingle Bells
'Jingle Bells' was published by James Lord Pierpont in September 1857 as 'The One Horse Open Sleigh'; written as a sleighing song, it only later became attached to Christmas.
Q 12In "Frosty the Snowman," what brought Frosty to life?
A silk hat
The lyric says 'there must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found', and Frosty begins to dance around the moment the children place the silk hat on his head.
Q 13Who first recorded 'The Christmas Song', the one about chestnuts roasting on an open fire?
Nat King Cole
Q 21Which carol did Frederick Oakeley translate from its Latin original in 1841?
O Come All Ye Faithful
'O Come All Ye Faithful' is Frederick Oakeley's 1841 English translation of the Latin hymn 'Adeste Fideles', whose refrain 'Venite adoremus' means 'O come, let us adore him'.
Q 22Which then-novel keyboard instrument did Tchaikovsky feature in his 1892 festive ballet score?
The celesta
The celesta, patented in Paris by Auguste Mustel in 1886, produces a bell-like tone from struck metal plates; Tchaikovsky had one shipped to Russia in secret so no rival composer would use it first.
Q 23In "The Twelve Days of Christmas", which bird sits in the pear tree on the first day?
A partridge
Nat King Cole's trio made the first recording of 'The Christmas Song' for Capitol in June 1946; Cole re-recorded it several times, and his 1961 stereo version is the one most often heard.
Q 14Which country is the original home of the carol "Silent Night"?
Austria
"Silent Night" ("Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht") was first performed on Christmas Eve 1818 at St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria.
Q 15"Jingle Bell Rock" was originally performed by which artist in 1957?
Bobby Helms
Bobby Helms released "Jingle Bell Rock" in 1957. Written by Joe Beal and Jim Boothe, it blended rock and roll with traditional Christmas themes.
Q 16'Last Christmas', long the highest-selling UK single never to reach number one, finally topped the chart in which year?
2021
2021 came on New Year's Day; the song has entered the UK chart every year since 2007 and became Christmas number one in 2023.
Q 17Who wrote the 1979 novelty song "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"?
Randy Brooks
Randy Brooks wrote 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer' in 1978 and handed it to a duo he shared a Lake Tahoe bill with; their 1979 recording turned it into a perennial novelty hit.
Q 18Which animated film introduced Howard Blake's song 'Walking in the Air'?
The Snowman
'Walking in the Air' was written by Howard Blake for The Snowman, the 1982 Channel 4 animation of Raymond Briggs's book, where choirboy Peter Auty sang it; Aled Jones's 1985 cover reached the UK top five.
Q 19Who co-wrote the 1984 Band Aid single 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' with Midge Ure?
Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof wrote the lyric and Midge Ure the music for 'Do They Know It's Christmas?', which Band Aid recorded in a single day on 25 November 1984 with some forty British and Irish pop stars.
Q 20Who is often credited with playing "O Holy Night" on the violin during a pioneering 1906 transmission?
Reginald Fessenden
Reginald Fessenden said he played 'O Holy Night' on his violin during a Christmas Eve 1906 broadcast from Brant Rock, Massachusetts; the claim rests mainly on his own later account.
One nineteenth-century antiquarian argued the pear tree is a garbling of the French perdrix, meaning partridge, so the bird may be doubled up.
Q 24Which Christmas song did some radio stations ban from 2018 over concerns about its lyrics?
Baby, It's Cold Outside
'Baby, It's Cold Outside', written by Frank Loesser in 1944 as a party duet with his wife, was dropped by Cleveland station WDOK and others in December 2018 over its consent-questioning lyric.
Q 25"Feliz Navidad" was written and performed by which Puerto Rican singer-songwriter?
Jose Feliciano
Feliciano wrote its 19 words while homesick in Los Angeles. The recording entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2010.
Q 26According to legend, 'Silent Night' was written for what instrument because the organ had broken?
Guitar
Franz Gruber composed the melody for guitar accompaniment on 24 December 1818, hours after Joseph Mohr brought him the verses; the broken-organ story is a later embellishment, but the guitar setting is documented.
Q 27Which songwriter wrote both "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"?
Johnny Marks
Johnny Marks wrote both songs, adapting 'Rudolph' from a story by his brother-in-law Robert L. May; he founded his own publisher, St. Nicholas Music, to handle his Christmas catalogue.
Q 28"Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" uses music adapted from which famous classical composer?
Felix Mendelssohn
Charles Wesley wrote the words in 1739; organist William Hayman Cummings fitted them to the secular Mendelssohn tune in 1855.
Q 29In "Winter Wonderland," what is the name of the snowman the couple builds?
Parson Brown
In the 1934 lyric the couple 'pretend that he is Parson Brown', a clergyman who asks 'Are you married?'; a 1947 children's verse replaced the parson with a circus clown.
Q 30Which instrument did the Gemini 6A crew smuggle into orbit to play a festive tune in 1965?
A harmonica
Wally Schirra played 'Jingle Bells' on a tiny Hohner harmonica while Tom Stafford shook sleigh bells, after the Gemini 6A crew reported a 'satellite' in polar orbit piloted by a figure in a red suit.