About This Quiz
Countless traditions accompany the holiday season. It's impossible to wrap up every Christmas tradition into a tidy little box with a big red bow, but if we tried, we'd have to include fruitcake, carols, mistletoe and "A Christmas Story."Both the Vikings and the Romans kissed under the mistletoe, a leafy green plant that some cultures consider an aphrodisiac. The Victorians were incredibly prim, so it's doubtful they endorsed any type of PDA -- even a quick peck under the mistletoe.
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Who doesn't love gingerbread? It's a delicious holiday treat that's made with such spices as anise, cinnamon and, of course, ginger. Cumin, a savory spice, doesn't have a place in the traditional gingerbread recipe.
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In the 1890s, French-born Marius Petipa choreographed "The Nutcracker" based on Dumas' retelling of the story. His ballet also interprets the famous score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
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The phrase that completes this rhyming couplet in "The Night Before Christmas," also referred to as "A Visit from St. Nicholas," is "...and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself."
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In 1897, Virginia O'Hanlon resolved to get to the bottom of the Santa question: Was he real or not? Her youthful hopefulness inspired a reporter from The Sun to assure her that the man in red was, in fact, very real.
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A must-see film during the holiday season, "A Christmas Story" is actually based on short stories and essays by American writer Jean Shepherd. Dylan Thomas actually did write a book about Christmas ("A Child's Christmas in Wales") but it's a little more high-brow.
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In the quintessential Victorian Christmas classic, the Ghost of Christmas Present is the jolly green giant. He's a lot more fun than the strange spritelike Ghost of Christmas Past and the frightening faceless Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
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Nineteenth-century orphans and beggars found that singing "Here We Come A-Wassailing" at Christmastime offered far greater returns on their pleas than simply asking for food and money. It has such a lilting melody that demanding verses like, "Now, bring us some figgy pudding!" were perhaps forgiven.
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It's actually true that fruitcake is nearly as dense as mahogany and that it's got a shelf life of three years (it can last longer if it's been baked with a lot of rum). However, the average fruitcake weighs 2 pounds, not 8.
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The candy cane used to look like a straight, plain white stick when it was first invented in the 17th century. It was used as a Christmas tree decoration, and not until the 20th century did it acquire its red stripes.
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