Thanksgiving Music Trivia
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49 free Thanksgiving Music trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Thanksgiving music trivia quiz covers the songs and hymns that actually get played on the fourth Thursday of November: Arlo Guthrie's 18-minute Alice's Restaurant and how it became a radio ritual, Lydia Maria Child's Over the River and Through the Wood, the Dutch hymn We Gather Together, Come, Ye Thankful People, Come, Adam Sandler's Thanksgiving Song from Saturday Night Live, and Vince Guaraldi's score for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. It also takes in the music of the day itself: marching bands and lip-synced Broadway numbers at the Macy's parade, the Salvation Army halftime concert at the Dallas game, Turkey in the Straw, Turkey Lurkey Time, Irving Berlin's gratitude songs and a few harvest hymns that fill church services the Sunday before. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has hosted the holiday, a third need a good memory for who wrote and sang what, and the rest reward people who know the dates, the composers and the odd stories behind the songs. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the songs, hymns and events before publishing, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. No lyrics are quoted. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which group played its farewell concert, filmed by Martin Scorsese as The Last Waltz, on Thanksgiving Day 1976?
The Band
The Band. Promoter Bill Graham served the Winterland crowd a turkey dinner before the music, and guests such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young joined the group on stage.
Q 02Arlo Guthrie says Jimmy Carter's son found a copy of 'Alice's Restaurant' in which former president's White House record collection?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon. Guthrie likes to add that the famous gap in the Watergate tapes runs about as long as his 18-minute song, though he insists he is 'not implying anything'.
Q 03In which Massachusetts town did the Thanksgiving littering arrest in "Alice's Restaurant" take place?
Stockbridge
Stockbridge. The dump was shut for the holiday, so Guthrie and a friend tipped the rubbish onto an old pile down a hillside; each paid a $25 fine and had to pick it all up.
Q 04What was the nickname of the police chief who arrested Guthrie in "Alice's Restaurant"?
Officer Obie
Officer Obie. The real chief, William Obanhein, went on to play himself in the 1969 film of the song, and he had already posed for the painter Norman Rockwell.
Q 05Why, according to Guthrie, did "Alice's Restaurant" become a Thanksgiving radio tradition?
DJs used its length to take a break
DJs used its length to take a break. Radio wasn't automated then, Guthrie says, and New York's WBAI once played the song so often that it raised money on pledges to stop.
Q 06Which institution chose 'Alice's Restaurant' for preservation as a culturally significant recording?
Library of Congress
Library of Congress. It added the song to its National Recording Registry in the class of 2017, though Guthrie says he never expected an 18-minute monologue to be put on a record at all.
Q 07What war was "Alice's Restaurant" protesting?
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War. In the song, Guthrie's littering record lands him on the Group W bench at his draft physical, where the military decides it doesn't want him.
Q 08Guthrie sent a demo of "Alice's Restaurant" to which relative on his deathbed in 1967?
His father Woody
His father Woody. Arlo says the family joke is that Woody Guthrie was played the test pressing, heard it and died soon after, in October 1967.
Q 09Who wrote the 1844 poem that became the song "Over the River and Through the Wood"?
Lydia Maria Child
Lydia Maria Child. Her 1833 book attacking slavery got her shunned socially and sank the children's magazine she had founded.
Q 10Unlike the version most people sing today, the original 1844 'Over the River and Through the Wood' heads to whose house?
Grandfather's
Grandfather's. Grandmother still gets her moment in the original poem: she turns up in its closing verses, greeting the sleigh party with a pie for everyone.
Q 11Which 1987 hit did its singer perform as a surprise prank on the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?
Never Gonna Give You Up
Never Gonna Give You Up. Rick Astley had kept his distance from the rickrolling craze, then burst onto a Cartoon Network float mid-parade and rickrolled millions of TV viewers himself.
Q 12In A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, what does Charlie Brown say about his grandmother after the gang's singalong?
She lives in a condominium
She lives in a condominium. His grandmother had invited the whole gang over after Peppermint Patty turned up her nose at their feast of toast, popcorn, pretzels and jelly beans.
Q 13The hymn "We Gather Together" began as a Dutch song celebrating a victory over which country?
Q 21On which show did Adam Sandler first perform "The Thanksgiving Song" in November 1992?
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live. He sang it at the Weekend Update desk with Kevin Nealon anchoring, though the version radio plays each November was taped at a California club eight months later.
Q 22Two years after 'The Thanksgiving Song', Adam Sandler wrote a better-known novelty number about which holiday?
Hanukkah
Hanukkah. 'The Chanukah Song' reels off famous Jewish names, and Sandler says he is proud of it but admits the first version got one of its facts wrong.
Q 23In "The Thanksgiving Song", Adam Sandler can't believe the Mets traded which player?
Darryl Strawberry
Spain
Spain. The Dutch were fighting Spanish rule for their independence and their Protestant faith, which is why the English words still pray that 'the wicked oppressing' will cease.
Q 14Which comedian made 'Thanks for the Memory', first sung in a 1938 film, his lifelong signature tune?
Bob Hope
Bob Hope. He introduced it as a duet in The Big Broadcast of 1938, then adopted it as his theme and kept having the words rewritten to suit each new audience.
Q 15Which soap opera's Quartermaine family traditionally sings 'We Gather Together' in its annual Thanksgiving episode?
General Hospital
General Hospital. The Quartermaines' holiday dinner is ruined year after year, so the family sings the hymn and then sits down to take-out pizza.
Q 16Which drama's Thanksgiving episode 'Shibboleth' ends with children singing 'We Gather Together' in the Rose Garden?
The West Wing
The West Wing. The press secretary spends the episode choosing which of two turkeys gets the president's pardon, and has to admit she doesn't know the hymn she is due to lead.
Q 17Which hymn did Henry Alford first publish in 1844 as 'After Harvest'?
Come, Ye Thankful People, Come
Come, Ye Thankful People, Come. When other editors rewrote the verses without his consent, Alford added a footnote to his own edition saying he did not approve.
Q 18Which animated sitcom has mom Linda burst into a 'Thanksgiving Song' that indie band The National later covered?
Bob's Burgers
Bob's Burgers. Voice actor John Roberts made the whole song up in the recording booth, and the show's writers later ranked it among their favourite numbers.
Q 19The pastor behind 'Now Thank We All Our God' buried plague victims during which war?
Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War. In the plague year of 1637 Martin Rinkart was the only pastor left alive in Eilenburg, burying up to 50 people a day, his own wife among them.
Q 20Which composer built a whole church cantata on 'Nun danket alle Gott', the German original of 'Now Thank We All Our God'?
Bach
Bach. His 1730 cantata sets all three verses of the hymn, but its tenor part went missing, so performers have to work from a reconstruction.
Darryl Strawberry. The Mets never traded him: he left as a free agent after the 1990 season and signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Q 24On which Adam Sandler album did the live recording of "The Thanksgiving Song" appear?
They're All Gonna Laugh at You!
They're All Gonna Laugh at You! The title is the shriek of a mother in one of the album's sketches, a riff on the horror film Carrie, and the record went double platinum.
Q 25Who composed the music for the 1973 special A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?
Vince Guaraldi
Vince Guaraldi. Producer Lee Mendelson sought the jazz pianist out after hearing one of his records on the radio, and Guaraldi was so keen that he played his first Peanuts theme to him down the phone.
Q 26Which song was introduced in the score of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, alongside the "Thanksgiving Theme"?
Little Birdie
Little Birdie. The composer sings it himself, a rare vocal turn for him, while Snoopy and Woodstock wrestle the garden furniture into place for the feast.
Q 27Which signature Peanuts theme was reworked with a brass section for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?
Linus and Lucy
Linus and Lucy. Its composer wrote it for a 1963 documentary about Charles Schulz that never found a sponsor, and it only reached television two years later in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Q 28In which landmark cartoon does the hero play 'Turkey in the Straw' using farm animals as instruments?
Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie. Captain Pete is not amused by Mickey Mouse's barnyard concert, and the short ends with the deckhand peeling potatoes in the galley as punishment.
Q 29Which crooner introduced "(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays" as a single for Christmas 1954?
Perry Como
Perry Como. The tune was written by his own piano accompanist, Robert Allen, and he went back to record it a second time, with a new arrangement, in 1959.
Q 30In the standard '(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays', a man from Tennessee heads to Pennsylvania for which homemade treat?
Pumpkin pie
Pumpkin pie. The joke of the verse is that everyone is swapping places: the Tennessean heads north for his pie while Pennsylvanians travel south for Dixie's sunny shore.