Movies
This 1990 film features Kevin McCallister defending his home from two bumbling burglars.
What is Home Alone?
This Roman festival, held in late December, influenced early Christmas celebrations.
What is Saturnalia?
Christmas celebrates the birth of this central figure of Christianity.
Who is Jesus Christ?
This famous 1914 event saw British and German soldiers play soccer and exchange gifts in no man’s land.
What is the Christmas Truce?
This plant, with its red leaves, is a common Christmas decoration originating in Mexico.
What is the poinsettia?
In this 2003 film, Will Ferrell plays a human raised by elves at the North Pole.
What is Elf?
Early Christians chose December 25 partly because it aligned with this “rebirth of the sun” festival.
What is Sol Invictus?
The Catholic Mass celebrated on Christmas Eve is traditionally called this.
What is Midnight Mass?
This type of temporary cease-fire, often declared during holidays, pauses hostilities and allows humanitarian relief.
What is a truce or armistice?
This German tradition of hanging a decorated tree indoors spread widely in the 19th century.
What is the Christmas tree?
his 1954 white-and-gold Irving Berlin musical stars Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney.
What is White Christmas?
This 4th-century bishop from Myra inspired the legend of Santa Claus.
Who is St. Nicholas?
This season of preparation, symbolized by purple candles, leads up to Christmas.
What is Advent?
This U.S. song, written by Bing Crosby during WWII, became a symbol of soldiers longing for home at Christmas.
What is “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”?
This Italian term refers to a 3-D representation of the Nativity scene.
What is a presepio (or presepe)?
This stop-motion film introduced the character Heat Miser and Cold Miser.
What is The Year Without a Santa Claus?
his 17th-century Protestant group banned Christmas celebrations in parts of England and New England.
ere the Puritans?
This feast on January 6 commemorates the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus.
What is Epiphany?
During the American Civil War, this Union general’s 1864 telegram to President Lincoln delivered a decisive victory just before Christmas.
Who is General William T. Sherman?
This Baroque painter’s “Adoration of the Shepherds” is one of the best-known Christmas-themed artworks.
Who is Caravaggio?
This 1946 Frank Capra film originally underperformed, but became a holiday classic due to copyright lapsing in the 1970s.
What is It’s a Wonderful Life?
This 1843 publication by Charles Dickens helped popularize modern Christmas charity and family traditions.
What is A Christmas Carol?
This doctrine, celebrated implicitly at Christmas, teaches that Jesus is both fully divine and fully human.
What is the Incarnation?
This 1944 WWII battle, launched in the dead of winter and beginning days before Christmas, was Hitler’s final major offensive on the Western Front.
What is the Battle of the Bulge?
This medieval artistic cycle depicting the infancy of Christ belongs to the broader group of scenes known as the “Joyful Mysteries.”
What is the Nativity cycle?