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's ruins lie beside the modern town of Demre; Patara, further along the Lycian coast, was Nicholas's birthplace rather than his see.

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 hanging by the fireplace get filled from his sack of toys; the poem moved the visit to Christmas Eve, and the two share a wink before he...

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: children in Britain and elsewhere leave a carrot for the reindeer beside Santa's own snack, a custom now common in the United States as well...

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

Descendants of Henry Livingston Jr. have long claimed he wrote it, but no printing with his name has ever surfaced, while Moore put it in his own 1844...