100 free Holiday Pop Culture trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Holiday pop culture is its own calendar. It starts when Mariah Carey posts her 'It's time' video at midnight on November 1, runs through Whamageddon, the Hallmark movie marathon, the Rockefeller tree and the 24-hour A Christmas Story loop, and ends when the ball drops in Times Square. This quiz covers that whole season, plus the pop culture attached to Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Groundhog Day and the Fourth of July. The movie questions run from It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street to Home Alone, Elf, Love Actually, Gremlins and the eternal Die Hard argument. Music covers White Christmas, Band Aid, Fairytale of New York, Brenda Lee's 65-year climb to number one, the Bowie and Crosby duet, Monster Mash and the Facebook campaign that put Rage Against the Machine at the top of the UK chart at Christmas. Television has Rudolph, Charlie Brown, the Grinch, the Star Wars Holiday Special, Festivus, the Holiday Armadillo, the WKRP turkey drop and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, and there is room for Coca-Cola's Santa, John Lewis adverts, Elf on the Shelf and ugly sweater parties. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and reference articles on the film, song, special or tradition, and each question shows its citation once you have answered. Easy ones ask what Charlie Brown gets in his trick-or-treat bag; hard ones want the songwriter who wrote Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree and the network that first aired New Year's Rockin' Eve.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year did Mariah Carey's 1994 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' finally reach No. 1 on the Hot 100?
2019
That 25-year climb set the record for the longest trip to No. 1. She co-wrote it with Walter Afanasieff, and the Associated Press put its royalties at around $100 million by 2023.
Q 02In which year did Wham!'s 'Last Christmas' finally reach No. 1 in the UK?
2021
It got there on 1 January 2021, the longest wait for a UK No. 1 ever. George Michael wrote it, and the duo gave the royalties to the same Ethiopian famine appeal that had beaten them.
Q 03Whamageddon players try to avoid hearing the original 'Last Christmas' in December. On which date does it end?
24 December
Remixes and covers do not count. One of the earliest documented references is a German video-game forum in 2009, and losers announce it with #Whamageddon.
Q 04In Home Alone (1990), the McCallisters leave Kevin behind while flying to which city?
Paris
Chris Columbus directed from a John Hughes script. Kevin's burglars call themselves the Wet Bandits, and the gangster film he blasts at them, Angels with Filthy Souls, was invented for the movie.
Q 05In Elf (2003), Buddy travels to New York to find his birth father, Walter Hobbs, played by which actor?
James Caan
Buddy got to the North Pole as a baby by crawling into Santa's sack at an orphanage. Bob Newhart plays his adoptive elf father and Ed Asner plays Santa.
Q 06Which actor made his film debut as Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988)?
Alan Rickman
He was already in his early forties. The film is based on Roderick Thorp's 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever, and its status as a Christmas movie is officially disputed even on Wikipedia.
Q 07Who sang 'You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch' in the 1966 TV special, uncredited?
Thurl Ravenscroft
He went uncredited, so Dr. Seuss wrote to columnists across the country to set the record straight. Ravenscroft was also the voice of Tony the Tiger.
Q 08In the 1964 Rudolph special, misfit elf Hermey leaves Santa's workshop to become what?
A dentist
Burl Ives narrates as Sam the Snowman. It has aired every year since 1964, the longest continuous run of any Christmas special on American TV.
Q 09The unmistakable jazz score of A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) was written by which pianist?
Vince Guaraldi
CBS executives hated the slow pace, the jazz and the real kids' voices; it won the Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program anyway. Linus's speech is straight from the Gospel of Luke.
Q 10The notorious 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special contained the first appearance of which character?
Boba Fett
He debuted in an animated segment by Toronto studio Nelvana. The special has never been rebroadcast or officially released in full, and George Lucas has said letting it happen 'probably wasn't the smartest thing to do'.
Q 11In which 1942 film did Bing Crosby first sing 'White Christmas'?
Holiday Inn
It won the Oscar for Best Original Song and has sold an estimated 50 million physical copies. Berlin told his secretary it was 'the best song anybody ever wrote'.
Q 12Bob Geldof wrote Band Aid's 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' in 1984 with which Ultravox frontman?
Midge Ure
It was recorded in a single day at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill and raised £8 million for Ethiopia within a year, spawning We Are the World and Live Aid.
Q 13Which act held 'Fairytale of New York' at No. 2 in the 1987 UK Christmas chart?
Pet Shop Boys
Q 21In Hocus Pocus (1993), the Sanderson sisters return on Halloween in which Massachusetts town?
Salem
Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy play the witches. The film lost Disney money in cinemas and became a cult hit through October TV airings; a sequel arrived on Disney+ in 2022.
Q 22Which SNL cast member debuted 'The Chanukah Song' on Weekend Update in 1994?
Adam Sandler
He wrote it with Norm Macdonald and two SNL writers, and has since added Parts II, III and IV with updated names.
Q 23In a 2000 Friends episode, Ross teaches his son about Hanukkah dressed as which creature?
Holiday Armadillo
It has never been Christmas No. 1 but has re-entered the UK Top 20 more than twenty times and is the UK's most-played Christmas song of the 21st century.
Q 14Haddon Sundblom painted the red-suited Santa Claus for which brand's ads from 1931?
Coca-Cola
His friend Lou Prentice was the first model. Sundblom is often wrongly credited with inventing the modern Santa; he standardised an image that already existed.
Q 15According to the rules in The Elf on the Shelf, what would make the elf lose its magic?
Being touched
Carol Aebersold and her daughter Chanda Bell self-published the book in 2005; by 2023 more than 22.5 million elves had been sold and one had flown in the Macy's parade.
Q 16How many original Christmas movies did Hallmark Channel's Countdown to Christmas premiere in 2017?
33
The block runs from the last weekend of October to New Year's Day. By 2017 the channel had 136 Christmas movies in its library.
Q 17The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York is usually which species?
Norway spruce
The first, in 1931, was a 20-foot balsam fir put up by construction workers. Since 2007 each tree has been milled into lumber for Habitat for Humanity afterwards.
Q 18Before the balloons arrived in 1927, the Macy's parade featured live animals borrowed from where?
Central Park Zoo
The parade began in 1924 and always ends with Santa. It was cancelled from 1942 to 1944 because rubber and helium were needed for the war.
Q 19The first New Year's Eve ball drop in Times Square welcomed which year?
1908
The drop was skipped for two wartime New Years in the 1940s because of lighting restrictions. Today's ball is covered in Waterford crystal panels and starts down the pole at 11:59:00.
Q 20In which year did 'Monster Mash' hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100?
1962
The BBC banned it that year as 'too morbid'. It came back to the Hot 100 in 1973 and still re-enters most Octobers.
Ben is half-Jewish and loves Christmas, so Ross improvises with the only costume he can find.
Q 24Festivus, from Seinfeld's 1997 episode 'The Strike', is celebrated around an unadorned pole made of what?
Aluminum
It falls on 23 December and includes the Airing of Grievances and the Feats of Strength. Writer Dan O'Keefe's father really did invent it.
Q 25In A Christmas Story (1983), the Old Man's prized 'major award' is a lamp shaped like what?
A woman's leg
Ralphie, meanwhile, wants a Red Ryder BB gun and is told he will shoot his eye out. TNT began the 24-hour marathon in 1997; TBS took it over in 2004.
Q 26In It's a Wonderful Life, which angel second class tries to earn his wings by saving George?
Clarence
The film flopped in cinemas, then its copyright lapsed in 1974 and free TV airings turned it into a classic. Zuzu explains that a ringing bell means an angel got his wings.
Q 27In Love Actually (2003), Hugh Grant plays David, who holds which job?
Prime Minister
Richard Curtis's film counts down the five weeks to Christmas through ten stories, including Andrew Lincoln's silent cue-card confession. Curtis reunited the cast for Red Nose Day in 2017.
Q 28In Christmas Vacation (1989), Clark Griswold gets a membership in what instead of his bonus?
Jelly of the Month Club
Cousin Eddie kidnaps the boss in response. Clark's 25,000 exterior lights briefly black out the city, and the film grew out of John Hughes's short story 'Christmas '59'.
Q 29Tim Burton conceived The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), but who directed the stop-motion film?
Henry Selick
It grew from a poem Burton wrote in 1982. Danny Elfman wrote the songs and sang Jack Skellington's parts, and Disney released it under Touchstone because it feared the film was too dark for kids.
Q 30John Lewis's 2014 Christmas advert starred a boy named Sam and Monty, a what?
A penguin
The retailer has made one every year since 2007, almost always set to a cover version; later stars included Moz the Monster (2017) and Excitable Edgar the dragon (2019).