Christmas Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about Christmas.

Christmas Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is Christmas?
A: Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.

When is it observed?
A: Primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world.

Although the month and date of Jesus' birth are unknown, by the early-to-mid fourth century the Western Christian Church had placed Christmas on what date?
A: December 25.

Today, most Christians celebrate on December 25 in what calendar?
A: The Gregorian calendar, which has been adopted almost universally in the civil calendars used in countries throughout the world.

However, some Eastern Christian Churches celebrate Christmas on December 25 of the what?
A: The older Julian calendar, which currently corresponds to January 7 in the Gregorian calendar.

The celebratory customs associated in various countries with Christmas have a mix of what?
A: Pre-Christian, Christian, and secular themes and origins.

Several closely related and often interchangeable figures, known as Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, and Christkind, are associated with what?
A: Bringing gifts to children during the Christmas season.

Because gift-giving and many other aspects of the Christmas festival involve heightened economic activity, the holiday has become a what?
A: Significant event and a key sales period for retailers and businesses.

"Christmas" is a shortened form of what?
A: "Christ's mass".

The canonical gospels of Luke and Matthew both describe Jesus as being born in where?
A: In Bethlehem to a virgin mother.

In the Luke account, Joseph and Mary travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for what?
A: The census, and Jesus is born there and laid in a manger.

It says that angels proclaimed him what?
A: A savior for all people, and shepherds came to adore him.

In the Matthew account, magi follow a star to Bethlehem to do what?
A: To bring gifts to Jesus, born the king of the Jews.

King Herod orders the massacre of whom?
A: All the boys less than two years old in Bethlehem, but the family flees to Egypt and later settles in Nazareth.

The first recorded Christmas celebration was where?
A: In Rome in 336.

Associating it with drunkenness and other misbehavior, what did the Puritans do?
A: They banned Christmas in the 17th century.

It was restored as a legal holiday in what year?
A: 1660, but remained disreputable.

In the early 19th century, Christmas was revived with the start of what?
A: The Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church.

Charles Dickens and other writers reinvented the holiday by emphasizing Christmas as a time for what?
A: A time for family, religion, gift-giving, and social reconciliation as opposed to the revelry that had been common historically.

In the 3rd century, the date of birth of Jesus was the subject of what?
A: Both great interest and great uncertainty.

December 25 was the date of the winter solstice on what calendar?
A: The Roman calendar.

In the 17th century, Isaac Newton argued that the date of Christmas was selected to correspond with what?
A: The solstice.

The pre-Christian Germanic peoples—including the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse—celebrated a winter festival called Yule, held when?
A: In the late December to early January period, today used as a synonym for Christmas.

In Germanic language-speaking areas, numerous elements of modern Christmas folk custom and iconography stem from Yule including what?
A: The Yule log, Yule boar, and the Yule goat.

The prominence of Christmas Day increased gradually after Charlemagne was what?
A: Crowned Emperor on Christmas Day in 800.

King Edmund the Martyr was anointed on Christmas in what year?
A: 855.

King William I of England was crowned on Christmas Day in what year?
A: 1066.

King Richard II of England hosted a Christmas feast in 1377 at which what was eaten?
A: Twenty-eight oxen and three hundred sheep.

The Yule boar was a common feature of what?
A: Medieval Christmas feasts.

Caroling also became popular, and was originally a what?
A: A group of dancers who sang.

The group was composed of a lead singer and a what?
A: A ring of dancers that provided the chorus.

Various writers of the time condemned caroling as what?
A: Lewd.

In England, when were gifts exchanged?
A: On New Year's Day, and there was special Christmas ale.

Christmas during the middle Ages was a public festival that incorporated what types of plants?
A: Ivy, holly, and other evergreens.

Christmas gift-giving during the Middle Ages was usually between people with what?
A: Legal relationships, such as tenant and landlord.

The annual indulgence in eating, dancing, singing, sporting, and card playing escalated in England, and by the 17th century the Christmas season featured what?
A: Lavish dinners, elaborate masques, and pageants.

In 1629, the Anglican poet John Milton penned what poem?
A: On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, a poem that has since been read by many during Christmastide.

King Charles I of England directed his noblemen and gentry to return to their landed estates in midwinter to keep up their what?
A: Old-style Christmas generosity.

Following the Parliamentarian victory over Charles I during the English Civil War, England's Puritan rulers did what?
A: Banned Christmas in 1647.

Protests followed as pro-Christmas what broke out in several cities?
A: Rioting.

For weeks Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who did what?
A: Decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans.

The Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 ended the ban, but many Calvinist clergymen still what?
A: Disapproved of Christmas celebration.

It was not until 1958 that Christmas again became what?
A: A Scottish public holiday.

In Colonial America, the Pilgrims of New England shared what?
A: Radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas.

The Plymouth Pilgrims put their loathing for the day into practice in 1620 when they did what?
A: Spent their first Christmas Day in the New World working, thus demonstrating their complete contempt for the day.

Christmas observance was outlawed in Boston in what year?
A: 1659.

The ban by the Puritans was revoked in 1681 by whom?
A: English governor Edmund Andros.

At the same time, Christian residents of Virginia and New York did what?
A: They observed the holiday freely.

Christmas fell out of favor in the United States after the American Revolution, when it was considered what?
A: An English custom.

In 1843, Charles Dickens wrote what novel?
A: A Christmas Carol.

Its instant popularity played a major role in portraying Christmas as a holiday emphasizing what?
A: Family, goodwill, and compassion.

The term Scrooge became a synonym for what?
A: Miser, with "Bah! Humbug!" dismissive of the festive spirit.

In 1843, the first commercial Christmas card was produced by whom?
A: Sir Henry Cole.

In Britain, the Christmas tree was introduced in the early 19th century following what?
A: The personal union with the Kingdom of Hanover by Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of King George III.

In 1832, the future Queen Victoria wrote about what?
A: Her delight at having a Christmas tree, hung with lights, ornaments, and presents placed round it.

By the 1870s, what had become common in America?
A: Putting up a Christmas tree.