Christmas Quiz #2 Answers

2nd Answers
1) If you were given some frumenty at a Medieval Christmas party, you
would probably:
A) Eat it
Frumenty was a spiced porridge, enjoyed by both rich and poor. It is
thought to be the forerunner of modern Christmas puddings. It has its
origins in a Celtic legend of harvest god, Dagda, who stirred a porridge
made up of all the good things of the earth.

2) The first charity Christmas card was produced by UNICEF in 1949. The
picture chosen for the card was painted not by a professional artist but by:
C) A seven-year-old girl
The girl was Jitka Samkova of Rudolfo, a small town in what was then
Czechoslovakia. The town received assistance from UNICEF after the
Second World War, inspiring Jitka to paint some children dancing around
a maypole. She said her picture represented "joy going round and round".

3) "Hot cockles" was popular at Christmas in medieval times. It was:
C) A game in which a blindfolded person was struck
"Hot cockles" was still a Christmas pastime until the Victorian era (if
anyone out there STILL plays it, please email us and tell us all about
it!). The other players took turns striking the blindfolded one, who had
to guess the name of the person delivering each blow. Ouch!

4) During the ancient 12-day Christmas celebration, it was considered
unlucky to:
A) Let the log in the fireplace stop burning
The log burned at Christmas time was called the "Yule Log". Sometimes a
piece of the Yule Log would be kept to kindle the fire next winter, to
ensure that the good luck carried on from year to year. The Yule Log
custom was handed down from the Druids.

5) "Mumming plays" with traditional plots have been enjoyed at Christmas
time in Europe since the Middle Ages. In England, the central character
is usually:
D) St. George
Mumming plays were passed down through generations. Some bits seem to
have nothing to do with the overall plot but are demanded by tradition.
In England, St. George fights a Turk, who defeats him, to much booing
and hissing from the audience. A Good Doctor then comes and saves St.
George, to wild cheering.

6) At lavish Christmas feasts in the Middle Ages, swans and peacocks
were sometimes served "endored". This means:
D) The flesh was painted with saffron dissolved in melted butter
In addition to their painted flesh, endored birds were served wrapped in
their own skin and feathers, which had been removed and set aside prior
to roasting.

7) One of the adventures of Sherlock Holmes takes place during the
Christmas season. The tale hinges upon:
B) A blue diamond found in a goose
In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" Holmes manages to recover the
jewel but, in the spirit of the Christmas season, allows the repentant
thief to go free - on the condition that he leave England for ever.

8) 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.

9) Postmen in Victorian England were popularly called "robins". This was
because:
B) Their uniforms were red
The British Post Office grew out of the carrying of royal dispatches.
Red was considered a royal color, so uniforms and letter-boxes were red.
Victorian Christmas cards often showed a robin delivering Christmas
mail.

10) "Little Jack Horner" in the nursery rhyme may refer to the man who
was chief steward to the Abbot of Glastonbury in the early sixteenth
century. If so, then the "plum" he pulled from his Christmas pie was
actually:
D) A deed to a manor in Glastonbury
The Abbot of Glastonbury, seeking favor with the king, sent Jack Horner
to the palace with the gift of a pie in which had been placed twelve
deeds to manor houses. When the King received the pie, there were only
eleven deeds - the deed to the Manor of Mells was missing. The Horner
family lives in the Manor of Mells to this day, but they have always
denied that the rhyme refers to them.

11) As early as 1822, the postmaster in Washington, D.C. was worried by
the amount of extra mail at Christmas time. His preferred solution to
the problem was to:
D) Limit by law the number of cards a person could send
Even though commercial cards were not available at that time, people
were already sending so many home-made cards that sixteen extra postmen
had to be hired in the city. The proposed law was never passed, however,
which in turn made possible Werner Erhard's entry into the Guinness Book
of Records in 1975 for sending the most Christmas cards: 62,824 in a
single year.

12) George Frederick Handel's great Christmas oratorio, "The Messiah",
was first performed in 1742, in:
B) Dublin
Handel (1685-1759) seems to have been a kind and generous man. "The
Messiah" was written for the benefit of charities in Ireland, and was a
success at its original performance, though it was not immediately
popular in England. Handel's favorite charity in London was the
Foundling Hospital. He conducted performances of "The Messiah" there
until 1754.

13) For the winter solstice, Druids in ancient Britain would gather a
forest plant that we now associate with Christmas. It was:
C) Mistletoe
In the time of the Druids, mistletoe was believed to have magical
properties. People who met under a tree bearing mistletoe were forbidden
to fight, even if they were enemies, and anyone who entered a home
decorated with mistletoe was entitled to shelter and protection.
Mistletoe may even have been part of Druidic wedding ceremonies.

14) In Victorian England, turkeys were popular for Christmas dinners.
Some of the birds were raised in Norfolk, and taken to market in London.
To get them to London, the turkeys:
D) Were supplied with boots made of sacking or leather.
The turkeys were walked to market. The boots protected their feet from
the frozen mud of the road. Boots were not used for geese: instead,
their feet were protected with a covering of tar.

15) 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
metres (300 feet) high. It was made the official Christmas tree in 1925.

16) The Philadelphia Mummers parade is a Christmas tradition of long
standing. Many members of Mummers clubs call themselves "two-streeters".
This is because:
C) The original Mummers clubs were mostly located on Second Street
Twenty Mummers clubs are still located on Second Street. There are four
types of clubs: the Comics, the oldest type; the Stringbands, who play
live music; the Fancies, with enormous costumes; and the Fancy Brigades,
the newest type. The parade takes place on January 1.

17) The first commercial Christmas card is generally agreed to have been
the one illustrated above. The card had a hostile reception from some
people because:
A) It depicted a family, children as well as adults, drinking wine
The card was the brainchild of Sir Henry Cole, a leading cultural light
in Victorian England who was later to become director of the Victoria
and Albert Museum, among many other accomplishments. The card was
painted by John Calcott Horsley. It depicts a family feast, under which
appear the words, "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You". Side
panels illustrate Christmas charity - feeding and clothing the poor.

18) The Irish custom of "feeding the wren" on December 26 consists of:
B) Carrying a wren door to door, to collect money for charity
The custom is based on a legend of St. Stephen. Once he was forced to
hide in a bush, but a chattering wren gave him away. Children cage the
wren to help it do penance for this misdeed. Often the children carry a
long pole with a holly bush at the top - which is SUPPOSED to hide a
captured wren.

19) 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.

20) St. Nicholas is a very hard-working saint, being the patron saint of
children, merchants, apothecaries, pawnbrokers, scholars and:
C) Mariners
St. Nicholas is reputed to be able to calm storms and rescue sailors.
Even pirates have claimed his protection. There are almost 400 churches
of St. Nicholas in England, more even than churches of St. George,
England's patron. As for the other choices in our question: St. John de
la Salle protects teachers, St. Lawrence librarians, and St. Cecilia is
the patron saint of music.

21) The fifth Sunday before Christmas has been called "Stir-up Sunday".
On this day, it is considered lucky to:
B) Have everyone in the family help to stir the Christmas pudding
The day got its name from a prayer-book verse used on that Sunday. The
verse begins, "Stir up, we beseech..." It was also considered the last
day that cakes and puddings could be made and still be ready in time for
Christmas.

22) The tradition of erecting a tree at Christmas is believed to have
started in:
C) Germany
Christmas trees are known to have been popular in Germany as far back as
the sixteenth century. In England, they became popular after Queen
Victoria's husband Albert, who came from Germany, made a tree part of
the celebrations at Windsor Castle. In the United States, the earliest
known mention of a Christmas tree is in the diary of a German who
settled in Pennsylvania.

23) In Britain, the Holy Days and Fasting Days Act of 1551, which has
not yet been repealed, states that every citizen must attend a Christian
church service on Christmas Day, and must NOT:
A) Use any kind of vehicle to get to the service
There must be a large number of Britons who break this law every year.
The law may have been intended to encourage humility by forcing even the
wealthy to attend the church on foot, or perhaps it was simply to avoid
the traffic and parking crush that universal attendance would otherwise
have brought about.

24) Some people like to hide a coin or trinket in the Christmas pudding.
This may have originated in the ancient custom, in Rome and elsewhere,
of concealing a particular object in food. The object was:
D) A dried bean
During the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a dried bean would be hidden in
the food. Whoever found it was then "master of the revels" - a king for
the holidays. Even a slave could be the lucky one. In medieval times, a
cake was eaten on Twelfth Night (January 6), during the most boisterous
party of the year. The "King of the Bean" ruled the whole party.

25) Louis Prang, a 19th-century German immigrant to the United States,
made an important contribution to Christmas in popular culture by:
D) Popularizing the sending of printed Christmas cards
Prang was a Bavarian-born lithographer who settled in Boston,
Massachusetts in the 1850s and established a successful printing
business. He invented a way of reproducing color oil paintings, the
"chromolithograph technique", and created a card with the message "Merry
Christmas" as a way of showing it off. He went on to produce a series of
popular Christmas cards. By 1881 he was printing more than five million
cards annually.

26) In many countries, Christmas is considered a propitious time for
fortune-telling. In Switzerland, an onion and salt are traditionally
used to predict:
B) The weather for the coming year
On Christmas Eve, the grandmother of the house cuts an onion in two and
peels off twelve layers. Each layer represents one month in the coming
year. Each is filled with salt. If the salt is dry on Christmas morning,
the corresponding month will have fair weather; if damp, there will be
rain.

27) An ancient religion, which has since died out, celebrated the birth
of a god on December 25th. The god was:
B) Mithras, the Persian god of war
Although the cult of Mithras began in Persia, it later spread and became
popular in Rome. Romans celebrated the birth of Mithras on December 25.

28) All through the Christmas season in old England, "lambswool" could
be found in the houses of the well-to-do. It was:
B) A brew of hot ale with roast apples floating in it
The drink that filled the wassail bowl was known as "lambswool". Sugar,
eggs and spices were added to the ale, and toast floated on top with the
apples. Poor people would bring their mugs to the door hoping for a
share of the steaming drink.

29) One Christmas ritual NOT drawn from an ancient tradition is the
British monarch's broadcast on Christmas day. The tradition began in
1932 with a speech written by:
C) Rudyard Kipling
No doubt Kipling's fine writing contributed to the enormous success of
the broadcast, which was also heard overseas. It began, "I speak now
from my home and from my heart, to you all..." Queen Elizabeth II
continues the tradition to this day.

30) In Victorian times, most Londoners would have been familiar with the
"goose club", which was:
D) A method of saving to buy a goose for Christmas
Goose clubs were popular with working-class Londoners, who paid a few
pence a week towards the purchase of a Christmas goose. The week before
Christmas, London meat markets were crammed with geese and turkeys, many
imported from Germany and France.