Q 01/05

Saint Nicholas, whose legend grew into Santa Claus, led the church of which city in Lycia?

A) Ephesus

B) Myra

C) Patara

D) Antioch

Answer · why

B) Myra

Myra made him bishop by chance, legend says: its clergy agreed to consecrate the first man to enter the church that morning, and Nicholas walked in. I...

Q 02/05

In the 1823 poem 'A Visit from St. Nicholas', what does the father watch his visitor fill after landing on the roof?

A) The children's shoes

B) The stockings

C) A sack of toys

D) The bedside boots

Answer · why

B) The stockings

The stockings were 'hung by the chimney with care'; the custom is traced to a legend of the saint in which, in one telling, the gold he gave three poo...

Q 03/05

Which cartoonist's Harper's Weekly illustrations from 1863 defined the modern image of Santa Claus?

A) Thomas Nast

B) Charles Schulz

C) Walt Disney

D) Dr. Seuss

Answer · why

A) Thomas Nast

Nast drew a fresh Santa for the magazine every year, and may have been the one who invented the idea that Santa lives at the top of the world.

Q 04/05

What snack do children traditionally leave out for Santa's reindeer on Christmas Eve?

A) A carrot

B) An apple

C) A sugar cube

D) A biscuit

Answer · why

A) A carrot

A carrot is the usual treat, though Scotland's Cairngorm reindeer herders say the real animals cannot eat one: with no upper front teeth they cannot c...

Q 05/05

Who is traditionally credited as the author of the 1823 poem 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'?

A) Edgar Allan Poe

B) Washington Irving

C) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

D) Clement Clarke Moore

Answer · why

D) Clement Clarke Moore

Clement Clarke Moore's poem first ran unsigned; he was named as its author in 1837 and printed it in his own Poems in 1844. Henry Livingston Jr.'s des...