Holiday Pop Culture Trivia
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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
It topped the Hot 100 in December 2019, 25 years after its release, then the longest climb to No. 1 in chart history. Carey co-wrote it with Walter Afanasieff.
Q 02In which year did Wham!'s 'Last Christmas' finally reach No. 1 in the UK?
2021
It reached No. 1 on the chart of 1 January 2021, 36 years after release. George Michael wrote it, and Wham! gave the royalties to Band Aid's Ethiopian famine appeal, which had kept it at No. 2 in 1984.
Q 03On which date does the Whamageddon game of avoiding Wham!'s 'Last Christmas' end?
24 December
Whamageddon runs from 1 December to midnight on 24 December; hearing the original Wham! recording knocks you out, while covers and remixes do not count. Losers announce defeat with #Whamageddon.
Q 04In Home Alone (1990), the McCallisters leave Kevin behind while flying to which city?
Paris
The McCallisters fly to Paris for Christmas and only realise mid-flight that Kevin is missing. Chris Columbus directed from a John Hughes script, and the gangster film 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
James Caan plays Walter Hobbs, a children's-book publisher who is on Santa's naughty list. Bob Newhart plays Buddy's adoptive elf father and Ed Asner plays Santa, with Will Ferrell as Buddy.
Q 06Which actor made his film debut as Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988)?
Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman, a Royal Shakespeare Company stage actor then in his early forties, made his film debut as Hans Gruber. The film adapts Roderick Thorp's 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever.
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
Hermey wants to be a dentist and joins Rudolph on the road as a fellow misfit. Burl Ives narrates as Sam the Snowman in the Rankin/Bass special, first broadcast on NBC on 6 December 1964.
Q 09The unmistakable jazz score of A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) was written by which pianist?
Vince Guaraldi
Vince Guaraldi wrote the score, including 'Linus and Lucy' and 'Christmas Time Is Here'. CBS executives disliked the jazz and the real children's voices, yet the special won the 1966 Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program.
Q 10The notorious 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special contained the first appearance of which character?
Boba Fett
Boba Fett made his first appearance in the special's animated segment, produced by Toronto studio Nelvana, 18 months before The Empire Strikes Back. The special aired once, on CBS on 17 November 1978.
Q 11In which 1942 film did Bing Crosby first sing 'White Christmas'?
Holiday Inn
Crosby introduced it in Holiday Inn, the 1942 musical that paired him with Fred Astaire. Irving Berlin's song won the Oscar for Best Original Song, and Crosby's recording sold an estimated 50 million copies.
Q 12Who co-wrote Band Aid's 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' with Bob Geldof in 1984?
Midge Ure
Midge Ure of Ultravox co-wrote and produced it with Geldof. It was recorded in one day at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill on 25 November 1984 and raised about £8 million within a year.
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
The Sanderson sisters, played by Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy, are resurrected in Salem, where the film was partly shot on location. A box-office disappointment in 1993, it became a cult hit through October TV airings.
Q 22Which SNL cast member debuted 'The Chanukah Song' on Weekend Update in 1994?
Adam Sandler
Adam Sandler wrote it with SNL writers Lewis Morton and Ian Maxtone-Graham and first performed it on Weekend Update on 3 December 1994; he later added Parts II, III and IV with updated lists of Jewish celebrities.
Q 23In a 2000 Friends episode, Ross teaches his son about Hanukkah dressed as which creature?
Holiday Armadillo
Pet Shop Boys' cover of 'Always on My Mind' was Christmas No. 1 in 1987, keeping the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl at No. 2; 'Fairytale of New York' has re-entered the UK Top 20 many times since.
Q 14Haddon Sundblom painted the red-suited Santa Claus for which brand's ads from 1931?
Coca-Cola
Sundblom painted Santa for Coca-Cola's Christmas ads from 1931 to 1964, using his friend Lou Prentice as the first model. He standardised rather than invented the red-suited Santa, which illustrators such as Thomas Nast had drawn decades earlier.
Q 15According to the rules in The Elf on the Shelf, what would make the elf lose its magic?
Being touched
The book's rule is that being touched makes the elf lose its Christmas magic, so children may talk to it but never handle it. Carol Aebersold and her daughter Chanda Bell self-published it in 2005.
Q 16Which band had the 1973 UK Christmas No. 1 with 'Merry Xmas Everybody'?
Slade
Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody', written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea, topped the UK chart for Christmas 1973; Wizzard's rival 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday' peaked at No. 4.
Q 17The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York is usually which species?
Norway spruce
The tree is almost always a 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.
Q 18Before the balloons arrived in 1927, the Macy's parade featured live animals borrowed from where?
Central Park Zoo
From the first parade in 1924, Macy's borrowed bears, elephants and monkeys from the Central Park Zoo; they frightened children, so Felix the Cat became the first balloon in 1927.
Q 19The first New Year's Eve ball drop in Times Square welcomed which year?
1908
The first ball dropped at midnight on 31 December 1907 to welcome 1908, a 700-pound iron-and-wood sphere lit by 100 bulbs. The drop was skipped in 1942 and 1943 because of wartime dimout rules.
Q 20In which year did 'Monster Mash' hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100?
1962
Bobby 'Boris' Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers topped the Hot 100 for two weeks in October 1962. The BBC banned it that year as 'too morbid', and it re-entered the Hot 100 in 1970 and 1973.
Ross rents the only costume left, an armadillo, and dubs himself the Holiday Armadillo, 'a friend of Santa's', to teach Ben about Hanukkah; Chandler then turns up as Santa and Joey as Superman.
Q 24Festivus, from Seinfeld's 1997 episode 'The Strike', is celebrated around an unadorned pole made of what?
Aluminum
Frank Costanza's pole is plain aluminum, chosen for its 'very high strength-to-weight ratio'; Festivus falls on 23 December with the Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strength. Writer Dan O'Keefe's father invented the holiday.
Q 25In A Christmas Story (1983), the Old Man's prized 'major award' is a lamp shaped like what?
A woman's leg
The lamp is a fishnet-stockinged woman's leg, which the Old Man proudly displays in the front window until Mother 'accidentally' breaks it. 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
Clarence Odbody, Angel Second Class, is sent to stop George Bailey's suicide and earns his wings when a bell rings at the end. The film's copyright lapsed in 1974, and free TV airings turned it into a classic.
Q 27In Love Actually (2003), Hugh Grant plays David, who holds which job?
Prime Minister
Hugh Grant plays a newly elected Prime Minister who falls for his junior staffer Natalie, played by Martine McCutcheon; Richard Curtis's film counts down the five weeks to Christmas through ten interlocking stories.
Q 28In Christmas Vacation (1989), Clark Griswold gets a membership in what instead of his bonus?
Jelly of the Month Club
Instead of his bonus, Clark receives a one-year membership in the Jelly of the Month Club, prompting Cousin Eddie to kidnap his boss. The film grew out of John Hughes's National Lampoon 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
Monty is a penguin, a toy that Sam imagines alive, and the advert was set to Tom Odell's cover of John Lennon's 'Real Love'. John Lewis has made a Christmas advert every year since 2007.