Holiday Traditions Trivia for Kids
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59 free Holiday Traditions Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This holiday traditions for kids trivia quiz travels the calendar and the globe. It starts with Christmas customs children know best, from stockings and reindeer to candy canes, crackers and the Elf on the Shelf, then moves through Hanukkah's menorah and dreidel, Kwanzaa's seven candles, Diwali's lamps, Lunar New Year's red envelopes and lion dances, Easter eggs, jack-o'-lanterns, Thanksgiving turkey and the Macy's parade, Valentine's cards, St. Patrick's shamrocks, Day of the Dead marigolds, Eid, Holi, Songkran's water fights and New Year's Eve in Times Square and Spain. Along the way it visits Sinterklaas in the Netherlands, La Befana in Italy, Ded Moroz in Russia and the KFC Christmas dinner in Japan. Questions are written for kids roughly 7 to 12, for classrooms, family game nights and holiday parties, and most are easy or medium. Grown-ups who want more can try our main holidays around the world trivia and Christmas trivia pages. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia article on the holiday or tradition, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Saint Nicholas, the 4th-century bishop behind Santa Claus, lived in which modern country?
Turkey
Turkey is where Myra stood, the town he served as bishop, but his bones were later carried off to churches in Italy, which spread his fame across Europe.
Q 02The American name Santa Claus grew out of which European gift-bringer's name?
Sinterklaas
Sinterklaas, Sante Klaas in Dutch dialect, gave Santa his name, and Washington Irving's 1809 book helped make the saint popular in America.
Q 03What's A Visit from St. Nicholas better known as?
The Night Before Christmas
The Night Before Christmas first appeared anonymously in a Troy newspaper in 1823, and Clement Clarke Moore only claimed it years later, a claim still questioned.
Q 04Which reindeer was created in 1939 for a department store's free Christmas booklet?
Rudolph
Rudolph was dreamed up by Montgomery Ward copywriter Robert L. May, and the store gave away millions of copies before Gene Autry's recording of the song sold millions more.
Q 05According to tradition, what does a child who has been naughty all year find in their Christmas stocking?
A lump of coal
A lump of coal is the naughty-child threat, while stockings recall a legend of Saint Nicholas tossing gold through a window for three poor sisters.
Q 06The custom of bringing a decorated Christmas tree indoors began in which part of Europe?
Germany and the Baltic states
Germany and the Baltic states had the first trees, and a picture of Queen Victoria's family around one in the Illustrated London News later helped spread the fashion to America.
Q 07Candy canes are usually flavoured with what?
Peppermint
Peppermint canes come with a famous legend: a Cologne choirmaster in 1670 is said to have handed noisy children sugar sticks bent like shepherds' crooks.
Q 08Which fairy tale is often credited with inspiring the first gingerbread houses?
Hansel and Gretel
Hansel and Gretel, in the Grimms' telling, find a witch's house built of bread and roofed with cake; only later versions turned it into gingerbread.
Q 09What's usually inside a Christmas cracker?
A paper hat, a small gift and a joke
A paper hat, a small gift and a joke replaced the sweet: Tom Smith first sold sweets wrapped with love mottoes, and his son Walter later added the paper crowns.
Q 10Where does the Elf on the Shelf fly each night while the children sleep?
To the North Pole to see Santa
To the North Pole to see Santa and report on the children, says the 2005 book, whose one rule is that touching the elf could make its magic go.
Q 11When is a four-candle Advent wreath's new candle lit?
Every Sunday
Every Sunday of Advent brings a new candle, but Johann Wichern's first wreath in 1839 lit one every day, because the children he cared for in Hamburg kept asking when Christmas would come.
Q 12Poinsettias sold for Christmas only turn red after weeks of long daily periods of what?
Darkness
Darkness does it, and poinsettias became a US Christmas staple after California's Ecke family sent free plants to TV shows.
Q 13In Japan, a 1970s advertising campaign made it a Christmas custom to eat dinner from which restaurant?
KFC
KFC turned one store manager's early-1970s push of fried chicken for Christmas into a nationwide 'Kentucky for Christmas' campaign in 1974.
Q 21What is the name of the extra helper candle used to light the others on a Hanukkah menorah?
The shamash
The shamash is also the one flame anyone may actually use, because Jewish law forbids putting the Hanukkah candles themselves to any practical use.
Q 22What is a dreidel?
A four-sided spinning top
A four-sided spinning top is used in a betting game, with players winning or losing chocolate coins called gelt.
Q 23Latkes, eaten at Hanukkah, are pancakes made mostly from which vegetable?
Potatoes
Potatoes are grated and fried in oil, a nod to the Temple lamp oil that is said to have burned far longer than it should have.
Q 14The Dutch Saint Nicholas figure traditionally arrives each year by what?
Steamboat
Steamboat arrivals, supposedly from Spain, are said to have been dreamed up by Amsterdam teacher Jan Schenkman in an 1850 picture book about the saint and his servant.
Q 15In Italy, who flies on a broomstick on the night of January 5 to fill children's stockings?
La Befana
La Befana is said to have given the Three Wise Men shelter for a night on their journey to find the newborn Jesus.
Q 16Ded Moroz, the Russian gift-bringer, has a name that translates as what?
Grandfather Frost
Grandfather Frost was banned in the early Soviet years, then brought back in the 1930s to star at New Year, which replaced Christmas as the big holiday.
Q 17Which animal does Sweden's popular straw Christmas ornament, tied with red ribbons, depict?
A goat
A goat of straw, and since 1966 the town of Gävle has built a giant one each Christmas, an advertising idea meant to draw people into its shopping streets.
Q 18On which date is Boxing Day celebrated?
The day after Christmas
The day after Christmas is when servants who had worked on Christmas Day were given boxes of gifts or leftovers by their employers, in one theory of the name.
Q 19What are the points of a traditional star-shaped Mexican Christmas piñata said to stand for?
The seven deadly sins
The seven deadly sins are the spikes, and the blindfolded player whacking the piñata is said to show faith beating temptation.
Q 20How many nights does Hanukkah last?
Eight
Eight nights recall the Talmud's one day of oil that lasted eight days, yet the First Book of Maccabees tells the Temple story with no oil miracle at all.
Q 24Kwanzaa runs for a week from late December and celebrates the culture of which group?
African Americans
African Americans have celebrated it since 1966, when Maulana Karenga created it after the Watts riots to bring the community together.
Q 25Kwanzaa takes its name from a phrase meaning what?
First fruits
First fruits, matunda ya kwanza, gave Kwanzaa its name, and the spelling gained another a so the name would have seven letters.
Q 26Diwali is often called the festival of what?
Lights
Lights from rows of small oil lamps called diyas fill homes and streets, and many families light them in honour of Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity.
Q 27On Diwali, many celebrate Rama's return to which kingdom after defeating the demon king Ravana?
Ayodhya
Ayodhya welcomed him home after 14 years of forest exile, forced on him when his stepmother Kaikeyi demanded the throne for her own son.
Q 28Holi, the famous Hindu festival, is known for people throwing what at each other?
Coloured powder
Coloured powder flies the day after Holika Dahan, a bonfire recalling the demoness Holika, who burned while trying to kill the boy Prahlad.
Q 29Chinese New Year is also known by what other name?
The Spring Festival
The Spring Festival sets off the world's biggest yearly migration, as hundreds of millions travel home for reunion dinners with family.
Q 30At Chinese New Year, what do elders usually tuck inside the red envelopes they give children?
Money
Money goes inside, and the envelopes are red because red is tied to good luck in Chinese culture.