Three French Hens

Here are ten Christmas trivia questions for you.  The answers may or may not surprise you.  I’ve included all of the answers in the post, but you’ll need to click “more” to see them.

1) Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer made his first appearance in 1939, in a story that was written to:

A) Advertise a new brand of light-bulb
B) Be read on a Christmas radio broadcast
C) Entertain the author’s sick daughter
D) Promote a department store

2) After Scrooge has reformed his life at the end of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, he proposes getting together with Bob Cratchit for some “smoking bishop”, which was:

A) A fast variation of chess popular in Victorian London
B) A premium pipe tobacco
C) A hot spiced drink
D) A Christmas pudding, soaked in brandy and set alight

3) Most of us like to spend Christmas with our families, but sometimes we must be far away. Even then, most of us get to stay on the planet. Prior to the continuous occupation of the International Space Station in 2001, how many people actually spent Christmas Day in space?

A) None – mission planners have always worked around it
B) Just three – the Apollo-8 team
C) Twelve
D) Thirty-five

4) In the Ukraine, if you find a spider web in the house on Christmas morning it is believed to mean:

A) Good luck
B) Misfortune will strike in the coming year
C) The winter will be unusually cold
D) Your house needs cleaning!

5) America’s official national Christmas tree is:

A) Displayed at the Rockefeller Center in New York
B) Brought from Canada and erected in Washington each year
C) Located in King’s Canyon National Park in California
D) A Scotch pine

6) A modern Christmas custom borrowed from ancient Rome’s New Year’s celebrations is:

A) Putting up mistletoe to make a “kissing bough”
B) Decorating a tree
C) Displaying a wreath on the front door of one’s house
D) Hanging stockings by the fireplace

7) The first instrument on which the carol “Silent Night” was played was:

A) A harp
B) A pipe organ
C) A guitar
D) A kazoo

8) Good King Wenceslas was king of which country?

A) Abyssinia
B) England
C) Bohemia
D) Gondor

9) The real St. Nicholas lived:

A) At the North Pole
B) On the island of Malta
C) In Turkey
D) In Holland

10) Believe it or not, one Indiana town is called:

A) Christmasville
B) Wenceslas
C) Noel
D) Santa Claus

And here are the answers.  I verified all of them, but only on Wikipedia.  :)

1) Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer made his first appearance in 1939, in a story that was written to

D) Promote a department store–The story was written by Robert L. May, the advertising editor of the Montgomery Ward department store chain. His four-year-old daughter picked the name Rudolph. May’s brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, later turned it into the now-familiar song, which was popularized by singer Gene Autry in 1949.

2) After Scrooge has reformed his life at the end of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, he proposes getting together with Bob Cratchit for some “smoking bishop”, which was:

C) A hot spiced drink–Mulled wines were popular festive drinks in 19th- century London. They were undoubtedly much safer to drink than the untreated water. To make Smoking Bishop, take 6 bitter oranges and stick them with 6 cloves each. Put them in a bowl, cover with (cheap) red wine, and set in a warm place for a day. Squeeze the oranges into the wine and strain. Add port. Heat, and serve with a cinnamon stick.

3) Most of us like to spend Christmas with our families, but sometimes we must be far away. Even then, most of us get to stay on the planet. Prior to the continuous occupation of the International Space Station in 2001, how many people actually spent Christmas Day in space?

D) Thirty-five–The first people in space at Christmas were Borman, Lovell and Anders, who orbited the moon in Apollo-8. Since then, 32 others have spent December 25 either in Salyut 6, MIR, or the International Space Station. Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev was there three times, in 1988, 1991 and 2000. Now that the ISS is continuously occupied, the number should continue to increase steadily.

4) In the Ukraine, if you find a spider web in the house on Christmas morning it is believed to mean:

A) Good luck–One Christmas morning, a poor woman, who could not afford decorations, found that spiders had trimmed her children’s tree with their webs. When the morning sun shone on them, the webs turned to silver. An artificial spider and web are often included in the decorations on Ukrainian Christmas trees.

5) America’s official national Christmas tree is:

C) Located in King’s Canyon National Park in California–The tree, a giant sequoia called the “General Grant Tree”, is over 90 meters (300 feet) high. It was made the official Christmas tree in 1925.

6) A modern Christmas custom borrowed from ancient Rome’s New Year’s celebrations is:

C) Displaying a wreath on the front door of one’s house–Romans wished each other “good health” by exchanging branches of evergreens. They called these gifts “strenae” after Strenia, the goddess of health. It became the custom to bend these into a ring and display them on doorways.

7) The first instrument on which the carol “Silent Night” was played was:

C) A guitar–The carol was first sung as part of a church service in Oberndorf, Austria. The unusual choice of guitar for the accompaniment rather than the traditional church organ has given rise to a number of picturesque stories (the organ bellows had been damaged by mice; the organ had been sabotaged; etc.), but in fact it was simply a matter of preference on the part of the author, Joseph Mohr.

8) Good King Wenceslas was king of which country?

C) Bohemia–The historical Wenceslas was actually only Duke of Bohemia, not a king. He lived in the tenth century.

9) The real St. Nicholas lived:

C) In Turkey–St. Nicholas was bishop of the Turkish town of Myra in the early 4th century. It was the Dutch who first made him into a Christmas gift-giver, and Dutch settlers brought him to America where his name eventually became the familiar Santa Claus.

10) Believe it or not, one Indiana town is called:

D) Santa Claus–There is also a Santa Claus, Idaho.