A Very Christmas Quiz

This year’s quiz has five parts of five questions each, all worth two points for a maximum score of fifty. Entries by the end of the year, please. I’ll post results and answers on New Year’s Day.

Christmas Celebrations

Identify these Christmas occasions – three are historical and two are fictional

1. When and where was Christmas celebrated with an informal game of football, and an English barber cut a German’s hair?

2. Who described whose Christmas celebrations thus:

‘Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!’

3. When and where did the Christmas menu feature Consommé Seal and Buzzard’s Cake?

4. Who described his Christmas thus, and when (to the nearest decade)?

‘We had to dinner, my wife and I, a fine turkey and a mince-pie, and dined in state, poor wretch, she and I; and have thus kept our Christmas together, all alone almost – having not once been out.’

5. Whose Christmas Day began with gifts of a coin, a chocolate frog, a sweater and a cloak, and who ended the same day in a snowball fight?

Links

The link is a single word in each case, not itself connected with Christmas, but each context must be identified for both points

6. What links the sky at night with the night before Christmas?

7. What, one Christmas, linked Premium Bonds with the hit parade?

8. What links the exchange of Christmas greetings with the fictional Potteries town of Bursley?

9. What links a Christmas cracker and a type of cured pork?

10. What links the traditional Christmas dinner with a great conflagration?

III

Trivia

Two part questions for two points each

11. Who returned to which square on Christmas Day 1995?

12. Who discovered Christmas Island and when?

13. Which notable scientist was born on Christmas Day 1642? Which other notable scientist died in the same year?

14. Which famous novelist wrote a New Year letter to her niece, beginning

‘Ym raed Yssac, I hsiw uoy a yppah wen raey. Ruoy xis snisuoc emac ereh yadretsey …’

What happened to her the following year?

15. Who, for Christmas in which year, addressed his fans as follows:

‘Hello, this is John, speaking with his voice. We’re all very happy to be able to talk to you like this on this little bit of plastic. This record reaches you at the end of a really gear year for us and it’s all due to you.’