Have you got the Xmas Factor?
Try this Historical Christmas Quiz
Teacher’s notes
Divide the class into groups. Break the quiz into separate rounds indicated
below.
Round 1 – quickfire round: teams have to call out one of the following
Christmas words to identify who they are: turkey, mistletoe, Christmas pud,
Santa Claus, Rudolf, crackers, sleigh bells, mince pies
Round 2 – champions league round: students nominate a champion who must
answer without conferring with team mates
Round 3 – also ran round: champions must leave room (or be gagged) and the
other members of the team, who can confer must do their best to answer!
Round 4 – penalty shoot out round: champions and teams can confer. Plus 5
points for correct answer, minus 5 points for incorrect answer. Students must
jump up to answer.
1. When is the Feast of Stephen according to the carol, Good King Wenceslas?
a) 24 December
b) 25 December
c) 26 December
2. True or False? The first Christian emperor, Constantine, held a party to
celebrate his son’s birthday. That day was the 25 December. The Christians
adopted the date to celebrate Jesus’ birthday instead?
True
3. Which medieval monarch had himself crowned on Christmas Day?
a) William the Conqueror
b) Henry II
c) Edward I
(When guards outside the Abbey heard the congregation cheer inside, they
thought it was the start of a rebellion and went on a rampage through London!)
4. Turkeys were first eaten in Europe in which century?
a) 12th
b) 16th
c) 19th
(The first recorded date of anyone eating Turkey is 1519, Turkeys were
‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus in North America in 1492)
5. Before Turkeys were eaten at Christmas, what bird did wealthy people often
eat for their Christmas dinner?
a) pigeon
b) peacock
c) blackbirds
6. A special cake used to be cooked on Twelfth Night with a bean inside. If you
got the slice with the bean you were the King or Queen of the Bean and
everyone did as you told them. Other things were put in the cake. If you got a
clove it meant you were a villain, a twig meant you were a fool, but what did a
piece of rag symbolise?
a) you were a bit too flirty with the boys!
b) you would be poor before the end of the year
c) you would spill your food down your front before the end of the meal
7. According to Henry VIII’s Unlawful Games Act, 1541 all sport was banned
except what?
a) Jousting
b) Fencing
c) Archery
(Archery, so people could continue to prepare for a possible invasion by the
French)
8. Which puritanical leader abolished Christmas altogether?
a) Queen Victoria
b) Oliver Cromwell
c) Queen Elizabeth I
(Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas between 1644 and 1656)
9. What famous ghost story, first published in 1843, arguably did more than any
other book to popularise Christmas?
Christmas Carol
(By the early 1800s the tradition of celebrating Christmas had almost died out.
The Times newspaper does not refer to Christmas at all between 1790 and 1835)
10. During which conflict did soldiers lay down their arms, exchange Christmas
presents, sing carols and even have a game of football?
a) Crimean War
b) World War I
c) World War II
(The last solider to remember the Christmas Day Truce of 1914, died in
November of this year!)
11. Which famous saint invented the idea of the Christmas Crib as a way of
telling the story of Christ’s birth to illiterate people?
a) St. Thomas Becket
b) St Francis of Assisi
c) St Nicholas
12. The Romans used frankincense for their funerals. Why?
a) To disguise the smell of burning flesh
b) To disguise the poor standards of hygiene of the time
c) To show how wealthy the dead person was, by burning an extremely
expensive type of perfume
13. True or false. An English custom used to exist to remind children of the
cruelty of Herod. On 28 December children were beaten by adults.
True (Sadly the custom died out in the 1700s!)
14. Before Cromwell banned mince pies in the 17th century, what shape were
these pies traditionally made into?
a) the shape of a Christmas star
b) the shape of a cradle, with a baby Jesus inside
c) the shape of a Christmas tree
(Mince pies were reintroduced with the Restoration of the monarchy in the 1660s.
Originally mince pies were also made with meat that was literally minced, but the
sweet-toothed Victorians favoured the candied fruit and suet used today)
15. When were Brussels sprouts first introduced to Britain?
a) 11th century
b) 16th century
c) 19th century
(The first written mention of these green little darlings is in 1587)
16. Who was the real Saint Nicholas?
a) a rich bishop who gave money to the poor
b) a merchant who travelled around the world
c) a monk from Lapland
(Saint Nicholas was a rich bishop from Myra in modern-day Turkey. His saint’s
day is actually the 6 December. Santa Claus is a derivation of Saint Nicholas)
17. True or false? During the American Civil war in the 1860s Santa Clause was
depicted wearing the colours of the US flag?
True
18. How old is the legend of Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer?
a) Half a century
b) Hundred years
c) Two hundred years
(It was created for a advert for a department store in Chicago in 1939 by Robert
May and set to music in 1949)
19. Which famous German first put up a fir tree in his house to celebrate
Christmas?
a) Martin Luther
b) Fredrick the Great
c) Prince Albert
(Legend has it he used the fir tree with its thousands of needles to explain the
complexities of God’s universe)
20. How long did it take Charles Dickens to write a Christmas Carol?
a) 22 years
b) 2 years
c) 2 months
21. Which famous Christmas panto, first performed in 1860, originally included
the character Buttoni, although he later changed his name?
Cinderalla
(Buttoni changed to Buttons)
22. In the 1750s, young people in the Scilly Isles went goose dancing at
Christmas. But what was goose dancing?
a) Another name for butchering geese for Christmas Day
b) A dance dressed with a goose strapped to your head to attract a future partner
c) A dance in which men dressed as women, and women as men
True of false?
23) The X in Xmas stands for the cross that Jesus died on.
False (The greek word for Christ is Xristos and many early Christians spoke
Greek. They used X to stand for Christ so X-mas stood for Christmas. As years
passed and non-Christians forgot the meaning of X they believed X had an old
pagan meaning and that to use X for Christ was a sign of disrespect.)
24) In the Middle Ages you could get a ready-cooked goose take-away for
Christmas
True. The Church fixed the price at 7 pence – more than a day’s wages. You
could have a raw goose for six pence. Elizabeth I had goose to celebrate her
navy’s defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. She ordered that English people
should have roast goose every Christmas to celebrate the event.
25) Santa is dead and buried in Italy
True. The grave of Saint Nicholas (the origin of Santa Claus) is in Bari in
southern Italy.
26) Ducks in Walmer, Kent get a present every Christmas
True. A special cake of of fat and flour is fed to the ducks on Walmer pond to
relive an ancient Kentish custom of feeding cockerels extra food on Christmas
that they would crow extra loud in the morning and frighten evil spirits away.
27 The first Christmas cards were printed for Queen Victoria
False. They were printed by an enterprising businessman named Sir Henry Cole
in 1843.
28 How many White Christmases did London have in the 20th century?
a) 2
b) 7
c) 13
(1938 and 1970)
29. The American national Christmas tree is where?
a) Central Park, New York
b) King’s Canyon, California
c) Alaska
(The General Grant Tree, a giant sequoia almost 100 metres high)
30. Victorian postmen were called ‘robins’ because their uniforms were red, but
why were they red?
a) So they could be seen in the snow and not run over by stage coaches
b) Because it was the Royal Mail and red was a royal colour
c) So that if they were attacked and robbed the blood wouldn’t show
31. Sherlock Holmes had a Christmas adventure called the ‘Blue Carbuncle’.
Where was the blue carbuncle (diamond) found?
a) Inside a Christmas goose
b) Inside the sack of a burglar who disguised himself as Santa
c) Inside the pipe of his assistant, Doctor Watson
32. What was the poem ‘The Night before Christmas’ called when it was first
written?
a) A visit from Rudolf
b) A visit from the Christmas fairy
c) A visit from Saint Nicholas
33. The Dutch Santa is dressed as a bishop and rides through the sky on what?
a) A reindeer
b) A horse
c) An angel
34. Superstition means you must not bring mistletoe into the house before 24
December. On which day must mistletoe be burned?
a) Christmas Day
b) Boxing Day
c) Twelfth Night
(Because of its superstitious associations many churches still refuse to have
mistletoe among their Christmas decorations)
Christmas firsts
35. In 1932 King George V gave the British public the first what?
a) Christmas message
b) Christmas street-lights
c) Christmas firework display from Buckingham Palace
36. In 1800 Queen Charlotte has what for the first time in England?
a) A Christmas tree
b) A Christmas tree with electric lights
c) A Christmas tree with woodworm
37. Christmas tree electric lights are first used in America around what year?
a) 1850
b) 1880
c) 1920
38. In 1841 there is the first mention of what?
a) Reindeers pulling Santa Claus across the sky
b) Christmas crackers
c) Balloons for Christmas parties
39. In 1864 a club arranged what seasonal first?
a) Taking off their clothes and racing to the top of Ben Nevis
b) Taking off their clothes and abseiling down the White Cliffs of Dover
c) Taking off their clothes and swimming in a lake in Hyde Park
(The Serpentine swimming club is born)
40. In 1848 the magazine the Illustrated London News published an extra 16page section. On what?
a) Christmas magazine special
b) Christmas joke book
c) Christmas recipe book
(The magazine included a feature on how materialistic Christmas had become!)