24 Christmas music quiz questions, from carols to chart hits

Christmas music is the one subject where nobody can claim ignorance. You don't choose to learn these songs. They're piped at you in every shop from the middle of November, which means a festive music round starts from a rare position: everyone in the room already knows the material.

That makes it a good leveller for a mixed crowd, and it means you can push the questions harder than you'd normally dare. These 24 cover the chart hits, the carols and the odd corners of Christmas music history, with a section at the end on running an intros round if you'd rather play the songs than read about them.

The modern classics

1Which 1994 Mariah Carey song has gone on to return to the top of the charts almost every December since?

Answer:"All I Want for Christmas Is You"(click to reveal)

2Which band released "Last Christmas" in 1984?

Answer:Wham!(click to reveal)

3That song spent five weeks at number two in the UK on release but was kept off the top by a charity single. Which one?

Answer:"Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid. George Michael sang on both records, and Wham! donated their royalties to the same famine relief cause. The song finally reached number one on New Year's Day 2021, a 36-year wait.(click to reveal)

4Which 1987 duet between The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl is set on Christmas Eve in a drunk tank?

Answer:"Fairytale of New York"(click to reveal)

5Which band recorded "Merry Xmas Everybody", released in 1973 and still inescapable five decades later?

Answer:Slade(click to reveal)

6Roy Wood's band released the other great 1973 festive single, the one wishing it could be Christmas every day. What were they called?

Answer:Wizzard(click to reveal)

7Which former Beatle released "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" with Yoko Ono in 1971?

Answer:John Lennon(click to reveal)

8Which singer had a 1988 Christmas number one with "Mistletoe and Wine"?

Answer:Cliff Richard(click to reveal)

9Which Chris Rea song, released in 1986, has become the unofficial soundtrack to the journey home at the end of December?

Answer:"Driving Home for Christmas"(click to reveal)

10Which 1980 Jona Lewie single, despite its brass band arrangement and festive reputation, is actually an anti-war song?

Answer:"Stop the Cavalry"(click to reveal)

Carols and older songs

11Which carol was first performed in an Austrian church on Christmas Eve 1818, with a guitar accompaniment?

Answer:"Silent Night" (originally "Stille Nacht")(click to reveal)

12"Jingle Bells" was published in 1857 under a different title. What was it originally called?

Answer:"The One Horse Open Sleigh". It wasn't written for Christmas at all, and only drifted into the festive repertoire over the following decades.(click to reveal)

13Which carol, sung in Latin as "Adeste Fideles", calls on the faithful to come to Bethlehem?

Answer:"O Come, All Ye Faithful"(click to reveal)

14In "The Twelve Days of Christmas", how many gifts are given in total across all twelve days?

Answer:364(click to reveal)

15Which carol tells the story of a Duke of Bohemia braving bad weather to bring food to a peasant?

Answer:"Good King Wenceslas"(click to reveal)

16Bing Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" is generally recognised as the best-selling single of all time. Which songwriter wrote it?

Answer:Irving Berlin(click to reveal)

17Which Christmas song, now a staple of American radio, was recorded in 1958 by a thirteen-year-old Brenda Lee?

Answer:"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"(click to reveal)

The harder questions

18Which song, originally a Ukrainian New Year's chant called "Shchedryk", became a Christmas standard in English?

Answer:"Carol of the Bells"(click to reveal)

19Which novelty character beat Take That to the UK Christmas number one in 1993?

Answer:Mr Blobby(click to reveal)

20In 2009, a campaign to stop that year's talent show winner taking the Christmas number one pushed which 1992 Rage Against the Machine single to the top instead?

Answer:"Killing in the Name"(click to reveal)

21Which Queen single has been the UK Christmas number one twice, sixteen years apart?

Answer:"Bohemian Rhapsody" (1975 and 1991)(click to reveal)

22Which children's television character took the Christmas number one in 2000 with "Can We Fix It?"

Answer:Bob the Builder(click to reveal)

23Which band, fronted by Chrissie Hynde, released the 1983 Christmas radio staple "2000 Miles"?

Answer:The Pretenders(click to reveal)

24Which Paul McCartney festive single, released in 1979 and recorded almost entirely by him alone, is still in heavy rotation every December?

Answer:"Wonderful Christmastime"(click to reveal)

Running a Christmas intros round

Festive music is almost custom-built for an intros round. The songs are short, instantly recognisable, and the opening seconds of most of them are distinctive enough that three seconds is genuinely enough.

Twelve songs is the right length. Any more and the novelty wears off, especially if your venue has been playing the same playlist since November.

Mix the eras properly. Four or five modern chart hits, a few from the seventies and eighties, and two or three older crooner recordings. That spread is what gives every table something they can get, and the older tracks are usually where the quietest team in the room suddenly comes alive.

Consider an outros round instead, or as well. Playing the last ten seconds of a Christmas song is much harder than the first three, and teams who think they've got this subject covered get a useful surprise.

For the wider festive night, our Christmas quiz round ideas covers 14 formats, and the Christmas film quiz questions set gives you a matching film round. If you want non-seasonal music questions, the music quiz questions post spans six decades. The quiz creator handles the audio and the answer sheets when you're ready to build it.