Holiday Season
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127 free Holiday Season trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
15 free Holiday Season trivia questions with answers. Holiday Season trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Holiday Traditions trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01Which two of Santa's reindeer had different names when 'The Night Before Christmas' was first printed in 1823?
Donner and Blitzen
Donner and Blitzen were 'Dunder and Blixem', from a Dutch oath meaning thunder and lightning, in the 1823 printing; an 1844 edition made them 'Donder and Blitzen', and 'Donner' took over in the 20th century.
Q 02Lovers are expected to kiss beneath which festive plant?
Mistletoe
Mistletoe once rationed the kisses: in one old version of the custom a berry was plucked from the sprig for each kiss, and when the berries ran out the kissing had to stop.
Q 03Who is the miserly protagonist of Charles Dickens' classic 1843 holiday novella?
Ebenezer Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge is the central character in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," who undergoes a significant transformation after being visited by several spirits on Christmas Eve.
Q 04Hanukkah marks the rededication of Jerusalem's Temple after a revolt led by which band of Jewish fighters?
The Maccabees
The Maccabees took their name from their leader Judah, nicknamed Maccabee, often read as 'the Hammer'; after years of guerrilla war they drove the Seleucid army out of Jerusalem and relit the Temple's menorah.
Q 05Which author is widely credited with the 1823 poem 'The Night Before Christmas', which gave Santa's reindeer their names?
Clement C. Moore
Clement C. Moore, who taught at a New York seminary, saw the poem printed anonymously in a Troy newspaper in 1823 and put it in a book of his own verse only in 1844.
Q 06Where did Protestant families first bring decorated evergreens indoors for Christmas?
Germany
Germany's medieval 'paradise tree', a fir hung with apples for plays about Adam and Eve on 24 December, is a likely ancestor; by the 16th century families there were setting up decorated trees at home.
Q 07Which Swahili word for 'unity' is the first of Kwanzaa's seven principles, the Nguzo Saba?
Umoja
Umoja is also a reply: during Kwanzaa people greet each other with 'Habari gani?' and answer with the principle of the day, so on December 26, the opening day, the answer is 'Umoja'.
Q 08What four-sided spinning top do children play with during Hanukkah?
Dreidel
The dreidel's four Hebrew letters stand for 'a great miracle happened there'; in Israel one letter is swapped so that the phrase reads 'happened here'.
Q 09Which metropolis is famous for its annual New Year's Eve ball drop celebration?
New York City
New York City's Times Square ball drop has welcomed every new year since 1908, skipping only 1942 and 1943 for wartime blackouts.
Q 10Who created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for Montgomery Ward in 1939?
Robert L. May
Robert L. May wrote Rudolph as a promotional booklet for Montgomery Ward in 1939; his illustrator friend Denver Gillen sketched the reindeer using zoo deer as models.
Q 11In which country did Boxing Day, December 26th, originate?
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom's servants had to work on Christmas Day, so they took the next day off and went home with a 'Christmas box' of gifts or money from their employers, one likely origin of the name.
Q 12The red 'petals' of a poinsettia are really which part of the plant?
Leaves
Leaves called bracts turn red only after weeks of long, unbroken nights; the plant's true flowers are the tiny yellow ones clustered at the centre.
Q 13What traditional German spiced cookie, often compared to gingerbread, is a popular Christmas treat?
Lebkuchen
Lebkuchen are said to have been invented by medieval monks in Franconia, who set the sticky honey dough on thin wafers like those used for communion so it would not stick; many are still baked on a wafer base.
Q 21The name Kwanzaa comes from a Swahili phrase meaning what?
First fruits
Kwanzaa comes from the Swahili 'matunda ya kwanza', meaning 'first fruits'; an extra 'a' was added so the name would have a symbolic seven letters, one per principle.
Q 22Which diarist recorded giving money to his shoemaker's 'boys' box against Christmas' on 19 December 1663?
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys was tipping the shoemaker's apprentices; such Christmas boxes, collected by tradesmen and servants once the holiday was over, are one likely origin of the name Boxing Day.
Q 23Which Australian sporting event sets off every year on Boxing Day?
The Sydney to Hobart yacht race
Q 14Which Hebrew greeting, meaning 'happy holiday', is commonly heard during Hanukkah?
Chag Sameach!
'Chag Sameach!' fits any Jewish festival; because Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights, some Israelis prefer 'Chag Urim Sameach', and many simply say 'Hanukkah Sameach'.
Q 15Tinsel, invented around 1610, was originally made from thin strips of which metal?
Silver
Silver tarnished quickly, so makers later switched to cheaper metals and then to plastic; the name has nothing to do with tin, coming from an Old French word for a spark.
Q 16Which British royal consort set up a Christmas tree at a children's party at Windsor in 1800?
Queen Charlotte
Queen Charlotte, George III's Mecklenburg-born consort, set up a decorated yew at a children's party at Queen's Lodge, Windsor, in December 1800, decades before Victoria and Albert's 1848 tree spread the fashion.
Q 17In 1087, sailors took the bones of Saint Nicholas from Myra to which Italian city, where they remain?
Bari
Sailors from Bari took the relics from Myra in 1087 and they rest in the Basilica di San Nicola there; Venetians later carried off remaining fragments during the First Crusade.
Q 18Which potato pancakes, fried in oil, are a traditional Hanukkah food among Ashkenazi Jews?
Latkes
Latkes are fried to recall the Temple oil that, in the Talmud's telling, burned for eight days; before the potato reached Eastern Europe in the 19th century, they were usually made with cheese.
Q 19What is the 'attendant' candle that lights the others on the festival-of-lights menorah called?
The shamash
The shamash, Hebrew for 'attendant' or 'servant', is the ninth candle on the hanukkiah; it lights the others and sits apart, higher or lower, because the eight Hanukkah lights may not be used for practical purposes.
Q 20Kwanzaa was created in 1966 by which activist?
Maulana Karenga
Maulana Karenga, a Black nationalist and later Cal State Long Beach professor, created Kwanzaa in 1966 after the Watts riots, modelling it on African harvest festivals.
The Sydney to Hobart yacht race began in 1945 as a planned cruise, until a visiting British naval officer, John Illingworth, suggested racing instead; a cricket Test also starts in Melbourne that day.
Q 24What do Buddhist temples do 108 times as the New Year arrives?
Ring a bell
Ring a bell: in the Joya no Kane ritual the 108 strokes are usually explained as one for each of the worldly desires that Buddhism says trouble people.
Q 25In 1843, Sir Henry Cole commissioned the first commercial example of which item?
A Christmas card
A Christmas card: with unanswered mail piling up, Cole had the artist John Callcott Horsley design one he could send instead of letters, and he had helped set up the Penny Post that made posting it cheap.
Q 26Who is sometimes called the 'father of the American Christmas card'?
Louis Prang
Louis Prang, a Prussian-born Boston lithographer, first tried his Christmas cards on the English market and only then began selling them in the United States.
Q 27What did the Keller Machine, invented by a Catholic priest in the 1950s, automate?
Twisting and cutting candy canes
Father Gregory Keller's machine took over twisting and cutting candy canes, letting his family's firm, Bobs Candies of Albany, Georgia, mass-produce a sweet whose hook had been bent by hand.
Q 28Which festive drink's name may come from an old East Anglian word for strong beer?
Eggnog
Eggnog may take its 'nog' from a strong ale once brewed in East Anglia, though some point to 'noggin', a small wooden mug; in 1826 West Point cadets smuggled in whiskey to make it, setting off the Eggnog Riot.
Q 29Botanically, mistletoe is which kind of plant?
A hemiparasite
A hemiparasite: mistletoe draws nutrients from its host tree through a root-like haustorium, yet it stays green and makes its own sugars by photosynthesis.
Q 30Which charity's bell-ringers collect donations in red kettles outside shops each December?
The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army's kettles go back to 1891, when Captain Joseph McFee set out a pot at a San Francisco ferry landing to pay for a Christmas dinner for the city's poor.