Christmas Tree Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
41 free Christmas Tree trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Christmas tree trivia covers the one decoration almost everyone puts up without ever asking why. These 41 questions trace the tree from medieval guild halls and Strasbourg Cathedral to Queen Victoria's Windsor Castle, the first electric lights in 1882 and the 50,000 bulbs on the Rockefeller Center tree. The set covers the origins of the custom, tinsel, glass baubles and feather trees, the White House and Trafalgar Square trees, tree species and tree farms, and a few oddities like Georgia's shaved-hazelnut chichilaki and the aluminium trees that Charlie Brown killed off. Every answer is checked against a cited source and each explanation adds one more fact. Use it for a December quiz night or the family table on decorating day. Play now and see how much you really know about the tree in your living room.
30 of 41 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which region did the modern Christmas tree custom first develop?
Central Europe and the Baltics
Central Europe and the Baltics: German settlers later carried the custom across the Atlantic to North America.
Q 02A 1539 record puts a Christmas tree inside which cathedral, then led by the reformer Martin Bucer?
Strasbourg
Strasbourg: the city had turned Protestant in the Reformation, and in 1681 Louis XIV of France seized it.
Q 03Which guild in Tallinn and Riga put up holiday trees as early as 1441?
The Brotherhood of Blackheads
The Brotherhood of Blackheads, a guild of unmarried merchants, set up trees in their guild houses in Tallinn from 1441 and in Riga by 1510; a 1584 chronicle describes young men dancing round the tree and setting it alight.
Q 04Which Protestant reformer is sometimes credited with first putting lighted candles on an evergreen tree?
Martin Luther
Martin Luther is said to have added the candles, and electric Christmas lights later took their place.
Q 05An 1848 engraving of which royal family's tree made Christmas trees fashionable in Britain and America?
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's
The Illustrated London News printed an engraving of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's decorated tree at Windsor Castle in December 1848, and the fashion spread quickly through the British middle classes and across the Atlantic.
Q 06Which ornament do some American families hide on the Christmas tree for someone to find?
A pickle
A pickle: whoever finds it first wins an extra present or good luck for the coming year.
Q 07The first known electric Christmas tree was lit in 1882 by a vice-president of whose company?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison: electric tree lights stayed too costly for most families at first, and they replaced candles on most trees only around 1930.
Q 08Modern tinsel was invented around 1610 in which German city?
Nuremberg
Nuremberg: traditional tinsel was cut from tin-lead foil, heavy enough to hang straight, until lighter plastic strands took over.
Q 09The mould-blown glass bauble was invented in which small German town?
Lauscha
Lauscha: around 1880 the American retailer F. W. Woolworth began bringing its glass baubles to the United States for his stores.
Q 10What were the earliest German artificial Christmas trees made from?
Green-dyed goose feathers
Green-dyed goose feathers: as German forests dwindled, families made these wire-branched feather trees as a stand-in for real evergreens.
Q 11The 'Christmas Tree Ship' Rouse Simmons sank in a 1912 storm on which Great Lake?
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan: everyone aboard was lost, but the captain's widow and daughters kept the family's Christmas tree business going for years.
Q 12Where were aluminium Christmas trees first manufactured in the United States, in 1958?
Chicago
Aluminium trees were first made in Chicago in 1958; most were later produced in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, by the Aluminum Specialty Company, and the Charlie Brown TV special helped kill the fad.
Q 13In 1979, why was only the National Christmas Tree's star lit?
For the hostages in Iran
Q 21What does the traditional tree topper represent, according to the Nativity story?
The Star of Bethlehem and the angel Gabriel
A star or angel topper stands for the Star of Bethlehem and the angel Gabriel respectively: the star guided the Magi to the stable, and Gabriel announced the birth, both in the Nativity story.
Q 22Around 723, Saint Boniface is said to have chopped down what, sacred to the god Donar?
A giant oak
A giant oak: its timber was reportedly used to build a church dedicated to Saint Peter on the spot.
Q 23Which 1965 special mocked aluminium Christmas trees?
A Charlie Brown Christmas
For the hostages in Iran: 50 smaller trees were lit, one for each hostage, and President Carter promised to light the rest when they came home.
Q 14Which president lit the first National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in 1923?
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge: that first tree was a cut balsam fir, but from the next year living trees were lit instead, until 1953.
Q 15Builders started Rockefeller Center's tree tradition during which crisis?
The Great Depression
The Great Depression: the construction workers pooled their money to buy that first small tree.
Q 16Which author's tale follows an evergreen that longs for Christmas, then is chopped up?
Andersen
Andersen: left in a dark loft after Christmas, the fir finally sighs, 'Had I but rejoiced when I had reason to do so!'
Q 17Oslo's annual Trafalgar Square tree thanks Britain for support during which war?
World War II
World War II: King Haakon VII spent the German occupation in exile in Britain, returning home in June 1945.
Q 18Which composer's ballet is set on Christmas Eve at the foot of a Christmas tree?
Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker's first performance was a failure, and the ballet only became a favourite years later.
Q 19Medieval 'paradise plays' used a fir hung with apples to stand for which tree?
The tree of knowledge
The tree of knowledge: the plays were given on 24 December, the feast day of Adam and Eve, with apples for the forbidden fruit and wafers for the Eucharist.
Q 20Which pope introduced the Christmas tree to St Peter's Square?
John Paul II
John Paul II: the Polish-born pope started the tradition in 1982, and each year since, a different country or region has donated the tree.
A Charlie Brown Christmas: it cemented the shiny trees' reputation for bad taste, and by about 1967 their heyday was over.
Q 24Which fir, found in the wild only in the southern Appalachian Mountains, is widely grown as a Christmas tree?
Fraser fir
Fraser fir: in the wild, an introduced insect, the balsam woolly adelgid, has killed large numbers of mature trees.
Q 25In Dr. Seuss's story, which little Who catches the Grinch taking her family's Christmas tree?
Cindy-Lou Who
Cindy-Lou Who: the Grinch fobs her off with a crafty lie, then strips the other houses in Whoville of their trees too.
Q 26What is a chichilaki?
A Georgian tree made of shaved hazelnut branches
A chichilaki is a Georgian tree made of shaved hazelnut branches, dried and curled into strips; Georgians say it resembles the beard of Saint Basil, and it is burned before Epiphany to send off the old year's troubles.
Q 27What does Tannenbaum, as in the carol O Tannenbaum, mean in German?
Fir tree
The song began as a folk tune about the fir's faithfulness before it became a Christmas carol.
Q 28What were the earliest decorated German trees hung with?
Apples, nuts and sweets
Apples, nuts and sweets: early guild trees were hung with treats for apprentices and children to collect.
Q 29Which British Labour Party anthem is sung to the tune of 'O Tannenbaum'?
The Red Flag
The Red Flag: its Irish writer, Jim Connell, had first set it to a different tune, a Jacobite anthem by Robert Burns.
Q 30Which is generally the cheapest, original Christmas tree species used in northern Europe?
Norway spruce
Norway spruce: it is thought to have grown wild in the British Isles before the last Ice Age, and it was later reintroduced.