How it works
These Christmas tree trivia questions stay on the tree: where the custom began, fir against spruce and pine, the public trees of New York, London and Rome, ornaments, tinsel, lights and tree farms.
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Seven rounds, from candles to tree farms
Where the custom came from runs from a cathedral in 1539 to a Soviet New Year tree. Fir, spruce and pine asks why firs lead and what turns a blue spruce blue. Famous public trees visits Rockefeller Center, the Capitol and a mountainside in Italy. Ornaments and tinsel and Candles and electric lights dress the tree, Tree farming grows it, and Artificial trees and namesakes meets aluminum trees, a reef worm and a star cluster.
A round for the night the tree goes up
Trimming the tree with family? Choose Ornaments and tinsel under Start from: every answer is about something already in your hands.
- Tree farming is the gentlest round by our estimate. Candles and electric lights is the hardest: five of its eleven questions are hard.
Questions and answers
What are the most popular Christmas tree trivia questions?
By our pick, the firsts: who is said to have first put candles on a tree, who made the first electric tree in 1882, when workers raised the first tree at Rockefeller Center, and how long a tree takes to grow.
Where did the Christmas tree come from?
The custom took shape in Central Europe, above all in Germany and in Livonia, now Estonia and Latvia, where Protestant families brought decorated trees indoors. Records put a Christmas tree in the Cathedral of Strasbourg in 1539.
How long does a Christmas tree take to grow?
From seed to about 2 meters, or 6½ feet, a tree takes eight to twelve years, depending on the species and how it is tended. It spends the first three or four of those years in a nursery.
Who invented electric Christmas tree lights?
Edward H. Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison, made the first known electrically lit Christmas tree in December 1882. It carried 80 hand-wired bulbs in red, white and blue, each about the size of a walnut.
What kind of tree is a Christmas tree?
Usually an evergreen conifer: a fir, a spruce or a pine. Firs are used most, because they keep their needles as they dry out. The Norway spruce is listed as the original Christmas tree of northern Europe.