December
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50 free December trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
December closes the year with more going on than any other month. Its name is a leftover from ancient Rome, its nights are the longest of the year for half the planet, and its calendar is crowded with festivals, feasts and countdowns. This quiz covers the month from every side: where the name and the calendar came from, birthstones and birth flowers, holiday customs from many countries, and the December dates that made history, from first flights and polar expeditions to speeches, treaties and Moon missions. You will also meet a few famous people who share a December birthday. The questions run from easy to tricky, so they suit a family table, a classroom, a seniors' group or a pub team. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the full set can be played online or printed for a holiday party.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01December's name comes from the Latin word for which number, a leftover from the early Roman calendar?
Ten
Ten is 'decem' in Latin, and December was the tenth month of Rome's earliest calendar. Two months were later added to the front of the year, but the old name stuck.
Q 02Which sitcom made a hit of Festivus, the December 23 holiday with an aluminum pole?
Seinfeld
Seinfeld put Festivus on the map in the 1997 episode 'The Strike'. The holiday was real: writer Dan O'Keefe's father had invented it, and the family was celebrating it as early as 1966.
Q 03Whose arrest on a Montgomery bus on December 1, 1955, set off a boycott that lasted more than a year?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin had been arrested for the same refusal earlier that year.
Q 04Which sport did British and German soldiers play in no man's land during the Christmas truce of 1914?
Soccer
Soccer, which the troops called football, was played at several points along the front that Christmas. Men from both sides also met between the trenches to swap food, tobacco, buttons and hats.
Q 05Which season begins on December 1 in Australia, where calendar months rather than solstices mark the change?
Summer
Summer begins on December 1 in Australia and New Zealand and ends on the last day of February. The school year there ends in December, so Christmas falls in the long summer break.
Q 06Which pop star, born on December 13, named her fifth studio album after the year of her birth?
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift was born on December 13, 1989, and titled her 2014 album 1989. She meant the name as a symbolic rebirth as she moved from country music to pop.
Q 07Which New York City spot has hosted a midnight ball drop almost every December 31 since 1907?
Times Square
Times Square got its ball drop from newspaper owner Adolph Ochs, who wanted a bigger spectacle than fireworks at his headquarters. The drop was skipped only in 1942 and 1943, during wartime blackouts.
Q 08In which country do people eat twelve grapes, one per clock chime, at midnight on December 31?
Spain
Spain welcomes the New Year with las doce uvas, a grape for each of the twelve bell strikes. Eating all twelve is said to bring a year of good luck and prosperity.
Q 09Which president told Congress that December 7, 1941, was 'a date which will live in infamy'?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt delivered the line the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Congress declared war almost unanimously soon after the speech, bringing the United States into World War II.
Q 10Which river did George Washington's army cross on Christmas night 1776 to surprise Hessian troops at Trenton?
Delaware
Delaware River ice was the crossing's worst danger and kept the artillery from getting over until 3 am. The Hessian garrison was caught by surprise and defeated all the same that morning.
Q 11Which eight-night Jewish holiday, often falling in December, recalls the Maccabees recovering the Second Temple?
Hanukkah
Hanukkah means 'dedication' in Hebrew. Foods fried in oil, such as latkes and jelly doughnuts, recall the small flask said to have kept the Temple's menorah alight for eight days.
Q 12Which celebration of African American culture, created by Maulana Karenga in 1966, begins each December 26?
Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa takes its name from a Swahili phrase meaning 'first fruits'. It runs through January 1 and builds to a communal feast called Karamu, usually held on the sixth day.
Q 13Which December 26 holiday in Britain, Canada and Australia is known for big sales and a packed sports calendar?
Boxing Day
Q 21Which English scientist, later Master of the Royal Mint, was born on Christmas Day 1642?
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton was born so early and so small that his mother said he could have fit inside a quart mug. England still used the Julian calendar, so elsewhere in Europe the date was already January 1643.
Q 22Which composer, baptized in Bonn on December 17, 1770, wrote only one opera, Fidelio?
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven has no surviving birth record, only the baptism entry. Local custom was to baptize a baby within 24 hours of birth, which is why December 16 is the usual guess for his birthday.
Q 23In which country do girls in candle crowns lead Saint Lucy's Day processions each December 13?
Sweden
Boxing Day is usually traced to the 'Christmas box', a gift or tip that tradespeople and employees received the day after Christmas. The name is recorded in Britain from 1743.
Q 14Which former Beatle was shot outside the Dakota, his New York apartment building, on December 8, 1980?
John Lennon
John Lennon had signed a copy of his new album Double Fantasy for his killer earlier that day. Crowds gathered outside the Dakota as the news spread, part of a worldwide outpouring of grief.
Q 15Which ship brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth in December 1620, weeks after first anchoring off Cape Cod?
Mayflower
Mayflower passengers numbered 102, and only about half of them lived through the first winter at Plymouth. Local indigenous peoples helped the colonists gather food.
Q 16Which James Cameron film opened in US theaters on December 19, 1997, and topped the all-time box office?
Titanic
Titanic was postponed to December by its studio, then became the first film to gross a billion dollars. It stayed number one for twelve years, until Cameron's own Avatar passed it.
Q 17Which author's 'A Christmas Carol' went on sale on December 19, 1843, and sold out by Christmas Eve?
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens saw the first 6,000 copies sell out in five days. He had insisted on such costly production that the edition earned him only £230, not the £1,000 he expected.
Q 18Which ballet, first staged in St. Petersburg in December 1892, became a holiday staple only decades later?
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker was less of a success at first than the short concert suite Tchaikovsky had drawn from it. Its great popularity came after George Balanchine's staging became a hit in New York City.
Q 19Which gemstone shares December on modern American birthstone lists with zircon and tanzanite?
Turquoise
Turquoise gets its name from an Old French word for 'Turkish', because the stone reached Europe by way of Turkish lands. The name is a misnomer: the prized stones were mined in Persia.
Q 20Near which North Carolina town did the Wright brothers make their first powered flight on December 17, 1903?
Kitty Hawk
Kitty Hawk appealed to the brothers for its regular breezes and soft sand for landings. The flights themselves took off four miles to the south, at what is now Kill Devil Hills.
Sweden celebrates with a girl chosen as Lucia, who wears a red sash and a crown of lit candles. Before calendar reform the feast once fell on the shortest day of the year.
Q 24Which Scottish poet wrote down 'Auld Lang Syne', sung as the clock strikes midnight on December 31?
Robert Burns
Robert Burns sent the verses to a song collection in 1788, saying he had taken them down from an old man. Part of the lyric does match a ballad printed back in 1711.
Q 25Which Christmas plant has a US national day on December 12, the date its American namesake died?
Poinsettia
Poinsettia honors Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first US minister to Mexico, who sent the plant home in the 1820s. Its flaming red 'petals' are actually leaves.
Q 26Which figure represents Sagittarius, the zodiac sign that covers December birthdays up to about the 21st?
Archer
Archer is what Sagittarius means in Latin, and the sign is often drawn as a centaur with a bow. Astrologers held that seers and prophets were born under it, since the bowman never misses the mark.
Q 27Which Soviet leader resigned on December 25, 1991, the night the red flag came down over the Kremlin?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev handed over control of the nuclear launch codes as he stepped down. That evening the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time.
Q 28Which state joined the Union on December 29, 1845, after nearly a decade as an independent republic?
Texas
Texas had declared independence from Mexico in 1836, though the Mexican government never ratified the split. President Polk signed the bill that made it the 28th state.
Q 29Which region was set aside for peaceful science by a treaty that twelve nations signed on December 1, 1959?
Antarctica
Antarctica became a scientific preserve under the treaty, with military activity banned. It was the first arms control agreement of the Cold War.
Q 30Which waterway did the United States hand over to local control at noon on December 31, 1999?
Panama Canal
Panama Canal operations passed to Panama under treaties signed by Jimmy Carter and Omar Torrijos. The handover ended the control the United States had exercised since 1903.