Easter
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This Easter trivia quiz has 193 free questions with answers and covers the whole holiday, not just the eggs. The 193 questions run from easy ones any child can answer, such as what an egg hunt is, what Peeps are and which country the Easter Bunny came from, up to harder ones on Holy Week, the date rules set at Nicaea, Faberge eggs and Easter customs from Poland, Greece, Sweden, Bermuda and Australia. Because the questions are sorted from gentle to tough, it works as Easter trivia for kids at the start and Easter trivia for adults by the end. Teachers can pull the first twenty for a classroom round; families can play the whole thing at the table after Sunday lunch; pub quiz hosts will find the back half hard enough to separate the field. Every answer is checked against a cited source and comes with a short explanation, so you learn why hot cross buns are marked, why Greek eggs are red and how Easter Island got its name. Play free and share your score.
30 of 193 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Germany's Franconia, what is dressed with Easter eggs in the Osterbrunnen tradition?
Wells and fountains
Wells and fountains are decorated with painted eggs and greenery; the custom began in the early 20th century in Franconian Switzerland, and displays stay up from Good Friday until about two weeks after Easter.
Q 02In French tradition, what flies back from Rome on Easter morning, bringing eggs for the children?
Church bells
Church bells fall silent in France in the days before Easter, and children are told they have flown to Rome; they return on Easter morning scattering eggs and chocolate.
Q 03Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after what lunar event?
Full Moon
Easter is the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, the ecclesiastical full moon falling on or after 21 March, which is why the date can shift by up to five weeks from year to year.
Q 04In many cultures, what do Easter eggs symbolize?
Rebirth
Rebirth is the idea, new life hatching from what looks lifeless; eggs were also forbidden through Lent, so Easter brought the first chance to eat them again.
Q 05Which poet answered Ireland's 1916 rising with 'Easter, 1916' and its refrain 'A terrible beauty is born'?
W. B. Yeats
W. B. Yeats ends the poem by naming executed leaders, among them John MacBride, a man he despised and calls 'a drunken, vainglorious lout' earlier in the same poem.
Q 06Which sweet, spiced fruit bread is traditionally eaten on Good Friday in the UK?
Hot Cross Bun
Hot Cross Buns were once so tied to holy days that in 1592 London's Clerk of Markets banned their sale except on Good Friday, at Christmas and for burials.
Q 07Which Renaissance artist painted The Last Supper on the wall of a convent dining hall in Milan?
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci painted it around 1495 to 1498 at Santa Maria delle Grazie, working in tempera and oil on dry plaster instead of true fresco, which is why it has decayed so badly.
Q 08Where in the U.S. is the best-known Easter Parade, famous for its festive bonnets, held each year?
New York City
New York City's parade grew out of a 19th-century habit: well-to-do worshippers left Fifth Avenue's churches after Easter services and strolled the avenue to show off new spring outfits.
Q 09In John's Gospel, who first sees the risen Jesus, mistaking him for the gardener?
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene recognised him only when he spoke her name; she answered 'Rabboni', teacher, and he sent her to tell the disciples what she had seen.
Q 10"Easter" is believed to derive from Eostre, a spring goddess of what ancient culture?
Germanic
Germanic is the usual answer because the name is Old English and has a cognate in Ôstarmânoth, the Old High German name for the Easter month.
Q 11In Britain, which food gives Shrove Tuesday its nickname, as cooks used up eggs and fat before Lent?
Pancakes
Pancakes used up the eggs and fats given up for the Lenten fast, so the last day before Lent became Pancake Day, still marked in British towns with pancake races.
Q 12What are the eleven balls on a British simnel cake made of?
Marzipan
Marzipan forms both the eleven balls, one for each apostle except the betrayer, and a layer baked through the middle of the cake.
Q 13On Easter Monday in Poland, what do people throw over one another in the Śmigus-dyngus custom?
Water
Water flies on what Poles call lany poniedziałek, Wet Monday; by tradition the boys soaked the girls, who took their turn the next day.
Q 21Which marshmallow candy shaped like chicks and bunnies is a popular US Easter treat?
Peeps
Peeps chicks were piped by hand in 1953 and took 27 hours each to make; mechanised production cut that to about six minutes.
Q 22On Easter morning many Christians say 'Christ is risen!'; what is the traditional reply?
He is risen indeed!
He is risen indeed! echoes Luke 24:34, where the disciples report 'The Lord is risen indeed'; the greeting itself repeats the angel's words to the women at the tomb.
Q 23What is the main liturgical color for Easter Sunday in many Christian churches?
White
White is the color of light in church symbolism and stands for joy, so at Easter it replaces the sombre violet worn through the penitential weeks before.
Q 14Which composer wrote the music for Jesus Christ Superstar, the 1970 rock opera retelling the Passion?
Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice could not get stage backing at first, so the score came out in 1970 as a concept album and only reached Broadway the following year.
Q 15Which decades-long conflict did the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998 largely bring to an end?
The Troubles
The Troubles had gripped Northern Ireland since the late 1960s; the deal, reached in Belfast on Good Friday itself, set up a power-sharing government and was backed by referendums that May.
Q 16Like Easter, the spring new year festival Nowruz features painted eggs; which culture's festival is it?
Persian
Persian families set painted eggs on the Nowruz table as a sign of creation and new life, and one long-repeated account has early Christians borrowing the Easter egg from Persia.
Q 17Which tall, sweet yeast cake is a traditional Easter bake in Poland and Ukraine?
Babka
Babka is 'little grandmother', supposedly for its skirt-like fluted shape; the braided Jewish babka is a cousin, and the French baba au rhum is thought to descend from it.
Q 18Which Roman emperor convened the Council of Nicaea, which ruled that all churches keep Easter on the same day?
Constantine
Constantine summoned the bishops to Nicaea in 325 and afterwards wrote to the churches urging them to adopt its Easter ruling; the council also drafted the first Nicene Creed.
Q 19Which feast falls on a Thursday, the fortieth day of the Easter season?
Ascension Day
Ascension Day recalls Jesus being taken up from the Mount of Olives as his disciples watched, until a cloud hid him and two strangers asked why they stood staring at the sky.
Q 20The White House Easter Egg Roll began after Congress banned egg rolling at which building?
The Capitol
The Capitol hosted the egg rolling until an 1876 crowd tore up its grass and Congress banned play there; in 1878 Rutherford B. Hayes opened the White House grounds instead.
Q 24In Sweden and Finland, children go door to door before Easter dressed as which figures?
Witches
The custom grows out of the old belief that witches flew on brooms to Blåkulla on the Thursday before Easter to meet the Devil.
Q 25What is the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, when Jesus's body lay in the tomb, called?
Holy Saturday
Holy Saturday is also when tradition places the Harrowing of Hell, Christ's descent to free the righteous dead, before the Easter celebration begins after nightfall.
Q 26At which spot on the Mount of Olives do the Gospels say Jesus was arrested?
Gethsemane
Gethsemane is where the Gospels say Jesus prayed in anguish while his disciples three times fell asleep, moments before the armed crowd arrived.
Q 27Which U.S. state is Ponce de León said to have named in 1513 for the Easter season in which he sighted it?
Florida
Florida is usually traced to Pascua Florida, 'feast of flowers', Spain's name for the Easter season; in other accounts Ponce de León named the land for its flowering landscape.
Q 28What type of meat is a traditional main course for Easter dinner in many Western countries?
Lamb
Lamb recalls the animal eaten at the first Passover, and Christians call Jesus the 'Lamb of God', which is how it became the classic Easter roast.
Q 29In the 1974 Peanuts Easter special, Snoopy hands out eggs to the gang but runs out before reaching whom?
Charlie Brown
Charlie Brown is the one left empty-handed: Snoopy, revealed as the Easter Beagle that Linus kept promising, gives eggs to everyone else, even Woodstock and Lucy.
Q 30Easter Island, named by a Dutch explorer who sighted it on Easter Sunday, belongs to which country?
Chile
Chile annexed the island in 1888 and leased much of its land for sheep ranching; the islanders became full Chilean citizens only in the 1960s.