50 free Christmas Tree trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Christmas tree trivia covers the one decoration almost everyone puts up without ever asking why. These 50 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 50 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
Protestant Christians in Germany and Livonia, now Estonia and Latvia, were the first to bring decorated trees indoors.
Q 02The earliest record of a Christmas tree in a church is from 1539 in which cathedral?
Strasbourg
It was put up under the Protestant reformer Martin Bucer.
Q 03Which guild in Tallinn and Riga put up holiday trees as early as 1441?
The Brotherhood of Blackheads
They set the trees up in their guild houses, and one 1584 account describes the 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
Moravian Christians later made candlelit trees common, before electric lights took over.
Q 05An 1848 engraving of which royal family's tree made Christmas trees fashionable in Britain and America?
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's
When an American magazine copied the picture two years later it removed the queen's tiara and Albert's moustache to make it look American.
Q 06What did Godey's Lady's Book remove from the royal Christmas tree picture when it reprinted it?
The queen's tiara and Prince Albert's moustache
The trick turned a Windsor Castle scene into an all-American family Christmas.
Q 07Who created the first known electrically lit Christmas tree, at his New York home in 1882?
Edward Hibberd Johnson
He was a vice president of Edison's electric company and had 80 walnut-sized red, white and blue bulbs made specially.
Q 08How many bulbs were on that first electric Christmas tree of 1882?
80
They were hand-wired and coloured red, white and blue.
Q 09Modern tinsel was invented around 1610 in which German city, and made from what?
Nuremberg, from shredded silver
Silver tarnished too fast, so cheaper shiny metals and later synthetic strands took its place.
Q 10The mould-blown glass bauble was invented in which small German town?
Lauscha
Hans Greiner started with garlands of glass beads and tin figures, and the town's artisans grew into a whole ornament industry.
Q 11What were the earliest German artificial Christmas trees made from?
Green-dyed goose feathers
They were a response to deforestation, with the feathers fixed to wire branches.
Q 12The first artificial tree made from brush bristles was created in 1930 by a British company known for making what?
Toilet brushes
Addis used the same animal-hair bristles as its brushes, only dyed green.
Q 13Where were aluminium Christmas trees first manufactured in the United States, in 1958?
Chicago
Most were later made in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and Charlie Brown's TV special helped kill the fad.
Q 21The Vatican did not put up its first Christmas tree until which year?
1982
The custom began among Lutherans, so the Catholic Church was a late adopter.
Q 22What does the traditional tree topper represent, according to the Nativity story?
The Star of Bethlehem and the angel Gabriel
Both come straight from the Nativity story.
Q 23A legend from the year 723 has Saint Boniface chopping down what to end a pagan sacrifice?
A giant oak
Later versions add that a fir grew in its place, its triangular shape standing for the Trinity.
Q 14Which US president put up the first Christmas tree in the White House, in 1889?
Benjamin Harrison
The National Christmas Tree on the South Lawn has been lit every year since 1923.
Q 15The National Christmas Tree on the White House South Lawn has been lit every year since when?
1923
It grew into one of the biggest annual events at the White House.
Q 16The famous Rockefeller Center tree in New York has been a tradition since which year?
1933
It is usually a giant spruce between 69 and 100 feet tall.
Q 17Roughly how many lights are hung on the Rockefeller Center tree?
50,000
Workers on scaffolding string the multicoloured LEDs, and since 2018 the star on top has been made of Swarovski crystal.
Q 18The city of Oslo has given London a Christmas tree for Trafalgar Square every year since when?
1947
It thanks Britain for its support of Norway during World War II.
Q 19How old is the giant spruce that Oslo sends to Trafalgar Square, typically?
50 to 60 years
It is usually more than 20 metres tall and is cut in a ceremony attended by the Lord Mayor of Westminster.
Q 20The tree of paradise in medieval mystery plays, a possible Christmas tree ancestor, was staged on which date?
24 December
That was the name day of Adam and Eve, and the tree was hung with apples.
Q 24The phrase 'Charlie Brown Christmas tree' comes from a TV special first shown in which year?
1965
The special is also blamed for ending the aluminium-tree craze.
Q 25Which fir, grown in the mountains of North Carolina, has been called the Cadillac of Christmas Trees?
Fraser fir
It is also called the most popular and most valuable of Christmas tree species in North America.
Q 26Roughly how many Christmas trees are harvested in Europe each year?
75 million
They are worth around 2.4 billion euros.
Q 27About how long does a Christmas tree grow on a farm before it is cut?
Ten years
Almost all trees in the US now come from farms, and a new tree is planted for each one cut.
Q 28What is a chichilaki?
A Georgian tree made of shaved hazelnut branches
Georgians say it looks like the beard of Saint Basil, and it is burned before Epiphany to send off the old year's troubles.
Q 29What 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 30What were the earliest decorated German trees hung with?
Apples, nuts and straw stars
Sweets for the apprentices came next, in the guild halls.