We're pretty serious here at ThinkBetter Media. But, overcome by Yuletide mirth, we offer the following quiz—even as our pedagogical intent is only slightly veiled...
1. Christmas is an official holiday in . . . Iraq. True or False?
True: The Iraqi government declared Christmas a "one-time holiday" in 2008, but in subsequent years this provision was not officially renewed at the national level, being applied in recent years only in the Province of Kirkuk.
Then in 2018, the government’s cabinet approved an amendment to the Law on National Holidays, raising Christmas to the rank of a public celebration for all citizens,
both Christians and Muslims. In 2020, a unanimous vote in parliament, which implements this amendment, means that Christmas is an officially recognized public holiday—"starting in 2020, and continuing into the future.”
See here.
2. Turkey is the traditional meat of Christmas: True or False?
Scholars disagree. Turkey is, after all, a New World bird. So the two European countries
that give us most of our Christmas lore—Germany and Britain—couldn’t have eaten
turkey in olden days.
Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, features a “prize turkey” as
Ebenezer Scrooge’s fine gift to the needy Cratchit family. Turkey-eating got a boost as
cheap turkeys from Canada (!) replaced beef more and more in the English celebration
in the 1930s and after. Now turkey is the standard in that country—while Americans fret
over the similarities of the meals for two cold-weather festivals only weeks apart:
Thanksgiving and Christmas.
In fact, early in the twentieth century, women’s magazines in the U.S. were promoting carnivorous alternatives, from venison to veal and from steak to pork.
3. Atheists generally hate Christmas: True or False?
False. According to scholar David Nash, Professor of History at Oxford Brookes
University, the governing attitude of declared atheists, mild-mannered agnostics, and
anonymous religious “nones” is . . . indifference. Only the radical, rabid atheists of the
Richard Dawkins type tend to object.
4. Both churches and stores receive their highest attendance and their biggest financial gains in the same period of the year: Christmastime. True or False?
True. Likewise, charities push hard for year-end giving, sometimes emphasizing the
tax break disappearing on December 31, sometimes simply reiterating the custom of
charity at Christmastime. This is a custom that goes back to English lords blessing their
servants with a special meal, small gifts, and (most blessed of all) time off.
5. Plum pudding and mince pies—the standard British desserts on Christmas Day—originally featured chopped meat. True or False?
True. Plum pudding was a common accompaniment to the roast beef typically
served—not unlike the way cranberries came to set off turkey—and it contained meat
and suet, along with dried fruit stewed in broth, spices, and wine. Mince pies were
mincemeat pies in like fashion.
Nowadays, plum pudding is strictly a (meatless) dessert, and is made the Sunday
before Advent, with each family member stirring it while making a New Year’s wish and
fortifying it periodically with whisky or brandy until Christmas Day.
6. The traditional dish for a Japanese Christmas celebration is . . . Kentucky Fried Chicken. True or False?
True—although the “tradition” dates back only to the 1970s. This is one of a thousand
examples of postwar Japan taking elements of the occupying Americans to suit its own
cultural norms. Indeed, the Japanese Christmas is most like the Western Valentine’s
Day, as its central ritual is the exchange of expensive gifts by young lovers.
7. The French bûche de Noël (chocolate Christmas cake in the shape of a Yule log), the “thirteen desserts” of Provence, the Italian “Feast of the Seven Fishes,” and the Scandinavian lutefisk (dried whitefish reconstituted by lye and water) are all beloved festive foods going back to the middle ages and revered by Europeans to this day. True or False?
False. The two French desserts don’t go back behind the 1920s. The “Feast of the
Seven Fishes” echoes the longstanding Catholic fasting from meat during Advent, but
the feast itself is a twentieth-century product also (appearing recently in popular culture
on the streaming series “The Bear”).
Meanwhile, lutefisk does indeed go back a long way—so long, in fact, that most
younger people in Scandinavia deplore it. For at least a generation, it has been
shunned as a repellent reminder of an impoverished past. Only midwestern Americans
of Scandinavian descent seem determined to keep the custom alive.
8. In Bellevue, Washington—a prosperous suburb of Seattle—parents and children set up a tree at a public school decorated with mittens and bearing the good wishes of the recipients of those gifted mittens. They prudently avoided calling it a “Christmas tree,” but instead named it a “Giving tree.” A complainant lodged a protest with the principal, however, that the tree (actually: a coil of silver topped by a star) “represents some part of Christianity.” The tree was quickly replaced by a “Giving Counter.” True or false?
True. Dr. Gerry Bowler, who has written a fine, scholarly book on Christmas
controversies, lists no fewer than several dozen sanitized alternatives to the dread term
“Christmas tree” that have been used to avoid controversy, among my favourites of
which are these: a “Multicultural Tree,” “A Festive Bush,” a “Seasonal Conifer,” and
(dear to my heart as a former professor) “The Finals Tree.”
9. “Festivus: for the Rest of Us” is now an official holiday in the Reform Jewish calendar.
True or False?
False. So far. The “Seinfeld” situation comedy show, with its impressive 10 Emmy
awards, alerted the world to this pseudo-festival. (Season 9, Episode 10: “The Strike.”)
Celebrated on December 23 (when no one else is doing much) as an alternative to the
perceived pressures and commercialism of the Christmas season, Festivus was created
by author Daniel O'Keefe, whose son Dan co-wrote the “Seinfeld” episode that
popularized it.
In the spirit of the “show about nothing,” the holiday features a Festivus dinner, an
unadorned aluminum Festivus pole, practices such as the "airing of grievances" and
"feats of strength," and the labeling of easily explainable events as "Festivus miracles."
10. Charles Schulz’s TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas was a smash hit in 1965 as it featured the Gospel of Luke on prime time. True or False?
True. Just barely. The script mystified network executives at CBS and they initially said
they would not order any more “Peanuts” specials.
Over 15 million viewers tuned in, however, which was fully nine per cent of the
American population that year. That’s equivalent to 30 million today, and about a
quarter of the number of people who watched Super Bowl 2024, the most-watched
Super Bowl in history. CBS changed its mind, and Linus went on to recite Luke 2 to
three generations of happy audiences.
11. The face of the Coca-Cola Santa Claus is the exact same face, excepting the beard, as that of the Quaker Oats Quaker. True or False?
False. But Haddon Sundblom, who painted the famous Coca-Cola Santa that globally
fixed his appearance in the minds of billions, also painted the Quaker Oats Quaker.
They could easily be brothers. Just google them.
12. There were three wise men. True or false?
Who knows? The scriptural story gives no number of the magi, nor does it name them. The Bible does give the number of gifts and their substances.
The middle ages solidified the story around the number three, giving them the names Gaspar (or Caspar), Melchior, and Balthasar. (The Eastern churches generally number them instead at twelve.)
One strong tradition is that they represented the three ages of man, while another said they represented the three known continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Hence the conspicuously swarthy features of the third, and the belief among many Chinese Christians that one of them was from the Middle Kingdom.
As the two traditions connect, Balthasar is usually seen as black, the youngest, and the bearer of myrrh. (I will leave for homework the interpretation of that connection of traits.)
St. Francis of Assisi is credited with staging the first outdoor crèche (French for manger or crib) as a teaching aid in the thirteenth century, although likely such tableaux had been presented before. No one seems to know, however, when the adoration of the magi got added to the shepherds’ visit. But that conflation produced a single scene in the popular imagination—despite the apparent time gap of as much as two years between the events recorded in GMatthew and GLuke—in Nativity scenes ever since.
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