Christmas Trivia #1

Answers I tried for "What type of drink is a wassail": Cider, hot, mulled, alcoholic, English, British, apple, spiced, and alcoholic. Anyone else have trouble getting a right answer?

I didn't even know it was a drink! Good going!

Any chance of accepting "king" for four-letter word referring to the wise men? They are often referred to as the three kings.

I tried that as well. :)

The juxtaposition of questions in this quiz feels highly appropriate.

Huh? To what juxtaposition are you referring?

Of course it's something to do with Christmas- the whole quiz is on the subject. It's how the subject matter of the quiz is treated and organized. Nothing negative, just realistic. Jumped out at me right away but if you can't figure it out I'll just leave it a mystery...

I have no idea what that means

You have no idea what the word juxtaposition means?

I think he knows what a juxtaposition is; but like me he doesn't have any idea what is being juxtaposed. Could tell us what you have in mind?

Santa, Rudolph, and the Grinch mixed together with Bethlehem, the virgin Mary, and the Magi, without any special ordering or distinction. Because they're all the same. I was trying to avoid upsetting someone again.

This ordeal just shows that they can be avoided when commentors stop being so pretentious.

If I seem upset then I'm guessing that you are projecting the bitterness you feel when you read my comments, because I'm not upset when I write them. I was commenting on something I approved of, after all. Why would that upset me?

sam: what do you mean? I wasn't upset. Where are you guys getting this from? I said the juxtaposition was highly appropriate. Not that it was INappropriate. What's the name for the cognitive bias where your brain skips over what it's actually seeing and just assumes it is what you would expect to see? I'm sure there's probably a name for it.

Jesus was real. He was born in Bethlehem. His mother was Mary. He was visited as a young child by an indeterminate number astrologers from the East.

Just because legends, fairy tales and pagan traditions have been layered upon these basic facts does not mean that the basic facts are now themselves fairy tales.

um, no, those basic "facts" are also fairy tales. Even if Jesus was a real person (debatable), and even if he had a mother named Mary (sure, why not)... his mother was not a virgin (not even in some version of the Gospel), he was almost certainly not born in Bethlehem, and the Magi story is *obviously* myth... come on... seriously?

But... I have no problem with these things appearing on a quiz next to questions about the Grinch and Santa Claus. Up until someone comes along and starts insisting that their fairy tales are historical fact.

In what version of the gospel is Mary not a version? As in, one that is actually accepted (under the First Council of Nicaea and similar meetings), not the Gospel of Thomas or something like that.

Additionally, you do actually need to provide a basis for why you think the Magi story is myth. Instead of just stating it without any logical context.

Anyway, you're gonna have a problem with insisting that these things are 'fairy tales' since a lot of people are going to be inclined to disagree. Time and time again you'll come and comment snarkily on a quiz to point out how obviously flawed it (or its comments) is, and yet you rarely seem to ever give an actual basis for why you think this. A conclusion is not an argument.

Matthew and Luke record Mary being a virgin. John and Mark (the oldest) make no mention of it. Miraculous virgin birth not noteworthy enough to warrant a mention in the first version of the story, apparently.

My logical context for believing the Magi story is a myth is all of documented and recorded human history and everything that we have come to understand as myth. If you want a more detailed explanation of how we know stories are myths, look it up yourself this is a comments section of a trivia website not my doctoral thesis.

People are free to disagree with whatever factual statements they want as long as they're okay with being wrong.

kalbahamut, they are facts. For school I am reading a book that I believe would make anyone believe that Jesus IS real, the entire book talks about how there is no possible way things like the theory of evolution could exist. The logic in that book makes the theory of evolution look like bogus, it is bogus, and for those of you reading this comment and asking yourself, What the heck is the theory of evolution, the theory of evolution is the belief that life began as a chance combination of nonliving chemicals. his mother WAS Mary, and he WAS born in Bethlehem AND THERE IS A JESUS

HP: I've read such books. Then I read some better ones and figured out I was wrong and these books I had previously read were peddling nonsense. Good luck to you.

Evolution is as much a scientific fact as Newton's laws of motion. It is supported and proven by mountains of evidence. It is fundamental to literally everything that we understand about Biology. The theory of Evolution is actually much better supported than, say, the theory of Gravity. Ctleng, as usual, you don't know what you're talking about. Get started here, or here

Thank you for an enjoyable quiz! Howevevr, may I suggest one slight improvement? The O, Tannenbaum question should rather be "What is the first line of the English lyrics to the German carol O, Tannenbaum?". If you want to keep the question in its current form, you should also accept the literar translation "O, fir tree".

To say nothing of "The Red Flag".

Well, here in Denmark, Santa lives on Greenland, which in my oppinion is just as good an answear as the North Pole.

I suppose the 'North Pole' doesn't belong to any country it is seen as neutral territory whereas Greenland is Danish.

Dunno if agree. The present is "a partridge in a pear tree." A bit like a saying a diamond ring would be two presents. Or a dozen roses is twelve presents + the vase?

Sugar plumS. I guessed "sugar plum fairies". Again when I try to guess it the plural is required, every time I add the plural s it's in front of the next question and I need to delete it. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

JESUS WAS BORN IN NAZARETH!!!!!!!!!!!

Have you not read the bible. He lived in Nazareth but was born in Bethlehem where his father Joseph came from

Though some speculate that, if he existed, he was probably actually born in Nazareth. Don't take the Bible as... well... gospel truth I suppose.

No need to shout, even if you are wrong.

Were they having a sale on exclamation points?

It's not known where Jesus was born. If he was a real man, the Nativity story was not recorded until many decades after he was born. There are no records of his life. Popular Christian tradition holds that he was born in Bethlehem. However, there is speculation that he was born in Nazareth as he is identified in Mark as Jesus the Nazorean. Nazorean is similar to the title Nazarene, meaning someone from Nazareth.

Critics of this theory point out that in the original Greek Nazorean and Nazarene are distinct terms, and also that there is evidence Nazareth was uninhabited during the 1st century, so it's doubtful there were any practicing carpenters starting families there at the time. Nobody knows from whence a Nazorean would come. Probably whatever small Palestinian village Jesus was said to be from has been lost forever to history.

Of all the things you go after, this one seems kind of odd to me. Why are you so intent on proving that a historical figure who you often say doesn't even exist at all was born in one tiny Judean city instead of another one nearby? I'm sure you wouldn't call yourself American...but you were born here. I have friends who would call themselves Ghanan though they're from Cote d'Ivoire, Georgian though they're from Texas, and Russian though they're from the United States. Even I was born miles away from where I live; that doesn't stop myself from using my current city's demonym. Of course Jesus was identified as a Nazarene/Nazorean; he lived there for much of his life, just not the first two years.

Additionally, 'there are no records of his life'? There are four gospels, about twenty other books in the Bible that reference him as a real historical figure, and a number of non-Christian materials from around the time of his life. Though expecting records for a...

...supposedly random person who probably (according to you) wasn't even real is rather unreasonable. It was the first century AD. They didn't exactly keep a record of every person who ever lived.

Aesthus your delusions of persecution make it very difficult to understand anything I say on this subject. I'm not intent on proving anything. I'm soberly discussing what the scholarly consensus is. And yes I'm American that's what it says on my passport.

religious texts are not historical records. There are precisely zero non-Biblical accounts of Jesus. Zero. None. Nada. Zilch. And yes expecting documented evidence for a person who wasn't real is unreasonable, that's true. Not having any such documentation is what we would expect in the event of a person not being real.

It remains the popular scholarly consensus that Jesus was in fact a flesh and blood man (even if obviously the Gospels are not accurate). It's my personal opinion that Jesus was a real person. I've stated both things many times. You are obviously too emotionally invested in this topic to even hear what I'm saying about it.

I don't know where you're sourcing your information kalb, but this time I believe you are not correct. If you mean to say that there are no accounts of Jesus written during his purported lifetime, that is accurate. However, there are at least 2 non-Biblical historic references to Jesus that treat him as a real person: one from the Jewish historian Josephus and one from Roman historian Tacitus. Though Wikipedia is of course not an ironclad source, their article on this subject covers both of these references in detail and contends that the historicity of Jesus is commonly accepted. This article by The Guardian also sums up the historical evidence pretty well. Of particular note is that no one in that time period seems to have questioned his existence.

I'm very familiar with those (brief, passing) references kenpo. It's likely that they are interpolations added to the texts later by Christians (especially the one from Josephus). Even if we assume that they are not, in both cases, the references only mention what was believed by Christians at the time they were written. They are hearsay. They do not reference any primary sources. Neither man claims to have met Jesus. One of these references (if it was not a later interpolation) was written in 94 AD. The other in 116 AD. A minimum of SIXTY years after Jesus' alleged death. And both are simply writing down what Christians believed.

This would be very much the equivalent of me writing: I traveled to Mecca. I visited the Kabaa, a brick house built by the Prophet Abraham. It was in this city that the Prophet Muhammad was born, and nearby where he received revelations from God.

I could write that. It would reflect my experience. It doesn't count as evidence that Muhammad existed in the 500s, or that Abraham visited Mecca. It's only evidence that Muslims exist today, along with an account of what those Muslims believe and what I was told when I was in Mecca.

Read all the Jesus chapters in the Bible, he was born in Bethlehem, Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem because all of the citizens of Bethlehem had to come there to be counted for taxes, Joseph was a citizen of Bethlehem, so he had to bring his pregnant wife with him, Mary had Jesus while they were there, and he grew up in Nazareth. If I remember correctly.

There was no such census being conducted that year and even if there were, no Roman census ever compelled citizens to travel to the land of their ancestors to be counted. You don't even know the details of your own mythology accurately. Christian tradition holds that Joseph had to come to Bethlehem because he was a descendant of David, and David was from Bethlehem. Joseph was not a resident or citizen of Bethlehem. Christian tradition holds that he and his family resided in Nazareth. (and then the Gospels contradict themselves on what he did afterward- either going back to Nazareth or fleeing to Egypt. Sort of the same way that Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire and The Amazing Spider-Man with Andrew Garfield differ on how Peter Parker is able to shoot webs and swing between buildings. Because these are works of fiction, not historical accounts.)

I feel like Tim Cratchit should be an acceptable answer in place of Tiny Tim as that is his surname.

You are technically correct... The best kind of correct!

There weren't three kings/wise men. There were an undisclosed number of wise men (more than one and less than 150 million, which is the number of men believed to be alive at the time) who collectively brought three types of gifts.

There probably were. If I told you I got three gifts from different people on Christmas, how many people do you think were there? Twenty? Two? I rest my case.

So three guys made an epic journey by themselves? Historically speaking, it was likely a caravan with a great number of people in it. There's no requirement that every single one of them present a gift. It was more than acceptable for the group to present three gifts, or even one.

In Spanish instead of saying 'Bethlehem', we say Belén

So what your saying is that the christians stole Christmas first. sounds about right

While some neo-pagans and other non-Christians have tried to reclaim (not steal) Christmas... I think atheists are content to share the holiday with everyone if they want anything to do with it at all.

Agreed, I'm an atheist and I like Christmas for the gift giving and celebration. but I'm not gonna tell christians not to celebrate the birth of their messiah. happy to share the holiday

Are you using "atheist" as a stand-in for Macy's and Madison Avenue?

They could do that, but the movie How The Grinch Stole Christmas is a widely known cartoon movie released in 1966, and they have also released a non-animated one in 2000, and they are also releasing another cartoon this year, in just a few days actually. So that is at least my opinion why the answer isn't

'atheist'

Only a joke to people with a sense of humour :P

78? Nope. 364. The math works it out.

https://www.intmath.com/blog/mathematics/the-twelve-days-of-christmas-how-many-presents-1686

I always wondered how the recipient was going to feed and care for all those drummers, pipers, lords,ladies, maids, and animals? (I'm assuming the humans were there only for the day, like a singing telegram.)

Also Mr. Burns stole Christmas from 1981 to 1985.

Serbian versin of Santa - Father Christmas is Brother Christmas. Fun fact.

In the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Narnia book, Santa is definitely referred to as Father Christmas. But I'm not British, so I don't know what's more common.

I don't know-I've heard it before but usually he's just called 'Santa Claus.'