Author normanjameson

A Christmas Quiz for You

normanjameson Leave a comment

Here is a Christmas quiz, with questions gathered from several sources. You can use it any way you wish but it makes a great Sunday School class or other party function. Make 2-3 teams and have a competition, with the winners earning the last of the egg nog!

As you can see, these are only the questions. I DO have an answer sheet!

Christmas Quiz

From Matthew 2 (mostly 🙂 )

  1. How long had good King Wenceslaus been king of Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth?
  2. Who was king in Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth?
  3. How many Magi came to worship Baby Jesus?
  4. Which is the only book of the New Testament that mentions the Three Kings?
  5. What did Herod ask of the Magi?
  6. What country were the Magi from?
  7. What gifts did they bring to Jesus?
  8. What dream did Joseph have after the Magi left?
  9. What signaled Joseph that it was safe to return to Judea?
  10. When Herod realized he had been outwitted by the Magi, what was his reaction?
  11. When Mary, Joseph and Jesus returned from Egypt, they intended to come to Judea, but they learned one of Herod’s sons was ruling there. What was the son’s name?
  12. Why were Mary and Joseph afraid of him?

From Luke

  1. Who told Mary she was to bear a child?
  2. Who was Mary’s cousin who was also pregnant in her old age?
  3. What was the name of the son this cousin eventually bore?
  4. Who issued the decree that prompted Mary and Joseph to go to register?
  5. To what town did they travel?
  6. Why did Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem?
  7. In what kind of building was Jesus born?
  8. Where was Jesus laid?
  9. What animals surrounded the manger?
  10. How many angels spoke to the shepherds to tell them the “good news of great joy?”
  11. What did the angel of the Lord say to the shepherds that he also said to Mary?
  12. What did the little drummer boy ask of Mary?
  13. How old was Jesus when he received his name?
  14. Who was the righteous man in the temple who the Holy Spirit had revealed that he would live until he saw “the consolation of Israel”
  15. What name is given to the four-week period leading up to Christmas?

Christmas traditions questions

  1. What date is St Stephen’s Day?
  2. In Charles Dickens’ novel A Christmas Carol, who was Scrooge’s dead business partner?
  3. The song White Christmas was first performed in which 1942 film?
  4. London’s Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is traditionally given by which country?
  5. In the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, ‘…my true love brought to me nine…’ what?
  6. Name the original eight reindeer from the ‘Twas the night Before Christmas’ poem?
  7. Which Christmas carol includes the lyrics ‘…To save us all from Satan’s power, when we were gone astray?
  8. What color are the berries of the mistletoe plant?
  9. In the inspirational 1946 film, It’s a Wonderful Life, what’s the name of George Bailey’s guardian angel?
  10. In which modern country is St Nicholas’s birthplace and hometown?
  11. Who wrote How the Grinch Stole Christmas?
  12. From which country does the poinsettia plant originate?
  13. Who is officially credited as the author of Auld Lang Syne?
  14. How many points does a snowflake have?
  15. The carol “Silent Night” was written in which country?
  16. Where did “Good King Wenceslas” rule?
  17. Which Christmas plant has the Latin name “Hedera”?
  18. To which city does New York cop John McClane travel to on Christmas Eve in “Die Hard”?
  19. What fruit is used to make a Christingle?
  20. What Christmas food staple was first brought to Great Britain by William Strickland in 1526?
  21. Which European country was the first to issue a Christmas stamp?
  22. In which German city would you find the shrine of the Magi, said to house the bones of the Three Kings?
  23. Which Pope in AD 320 declared December 25th to be Christmas Day?
  24. Which Saint first performed a nativity play?
  25. What present did Harry Potter receive for his first Christmas at Hogwarts?
  26. On what date does Twelfth night occur?
  27. Who wrote the song “White Christmas?”
  28. Which US state was the last to declare Christmas a holiday?
  29. In Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” what is Scrooge’s first name?
  30. Name the three reindeer whose name begins with the letter ‘D’.
  31. With which seasonal product did J C Hall make his millions?
  32. Who composed “The Christmas Oratorio?”
  33. In which film did Judy Garland sing, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”?
  34. In which fictional land is it always winter but never Christmas? –
  35. In “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” why was The Grinch so mean?

Birthdays aren’t what they used to be

normanjameson Leave a comment

I had a birthday this week. Like comedian George Lopez would say, I was thrilled to have it because it means I’m not dead.

Friends and family called to indicate their memory is still sharp enough to have remembered my birthday. Some sang, some were brief, others wanted to catch up. Most of them asked if I felt another year older.

Truth is, I don’t feel another year older. I feel about like I did five or 10 years ago. In fact, because of diet, exercise and a good wife, I feel just like I thought five years ago that I’d feel at this point. And I may be naive, but I expect to feel the same 10 years from now. After that I may give the whole diet and exercise thing a rest.

But it strikes me that I’m actually doing and feeling much better than I would have guessed, were I to ask myself 25 years ago what I thought I’d feel like at this point in my life. Strange? Not really.

At age 62 I’m not playing pickup basketball like I once did. My football playing consists of throwing passes to grandsons, who do all the running. But I can still hum it in a nice spiral.

I’ve traded running, which I never liked, for bike riding, which I love. I’m riding 64 miles tomorrow to commemorate my birthday — one mile per year with a couple extra thrown because the route is 64 miles and I don’t want to stop two miles from home.

I eat basically a paleo diet, with some allowances for chocolate covered raisins and more fruit than it likes because, hey, it’s fruit and has to be good for you. Paleo is ultra low carb, basically meat, veggies, fruit. I haven’t done soft drinks for years; don’t eat stuff like rice, bread and potatoes that turn to sugar in your body. I’m not on any medicine of any kind. Thank you mom and dad for good genetics.

Some 100 Facebook friends took the time to say “Happy Birthday” and that was nice. I got a new computer monitor to fight “text neck” from being hunched over trying to read my tiny laptop screen.

But the birthday, the demarcation of another year gone by, was really, just another day. I’m going to a birthday party Sunday for a grandson who has been excited about it for a month. My daughter blocks off her “birth month” for daily celebration.

“Just another day” can be a good thing when your days are good. And thanks be to God, my days are good.

I wish the same for you.

Hold the Ladder

normanjameson Leave a comment

Hold the ladder

 When I came back from a trip to Bihar, India, I thought I knew that in those dusty villages with dung-daubed mud brick walls lived the poorest people in the world.

Then I went to Haiti after the earthquake.

I was convinced then that in those barren tent cities with no apparent water source, no services and acrid smoke permeating the humid, tropical air lived the poorest people in the world.

Then I heard K Brown’s stories and saw his pictures from Ukraine.

Once more, I knew that in those frigid and muddy streets twisting without rhyme or reason between leaky shelters cobbled together with nails, wire and plastic lived the poorest people in the world.

I think I’m right this time.

After his first trip to Ukraine, Brown, a masterful video story teller, brought home haunting images of the murky, fetid streets and shacks of the Roma village in Mukacheve. Their Ukrainian neighbors consider the Roma, or gypsies, untouchable. But Brown and his team found them so winsome, transparent and hungry that he has become a regular visitor, planning and bringing medical teams and vacation Bible school workers back every year.

So often our mission trips become a four-act play of we go, we minister, we cry, we take pictures to prove we care. We leave behind everything we brought to be distributed among the people because we feel suddenly selfish having extra when they have nothing.

Dana Brown left behind more than her extra jeans. Dana, who assists her husband K on most of his documentary journeys, is the victim of a genetic defect — cardiomushextremis. Basically, she suffers from an extremely soft heart, susceptible to the emotive vibes of the poorest among us, those who feebly cling to life’s fragile fringe.

Dana finds relief for her condition only in ever higher doses of gypsy children, administered through hugs and smiles that communicate more love without words than a common language ever could.

She paints fingernails, holding each little hand in her larger hand, skin on skin, dirt on clean, hope on heart. More than polish the kids want their hands in hers and they run behind a building and scratch off the color so they can jump back in line to have Dana paint their nails — and hold their hand.

Dana encouraged an older woman waiting on the edge to join them. She at first declined but Dana’s disease is communicable and the woman softened. When Dana reached for her, the woman clutched Dana’s hand and touched it to her lips, and cried as if she’d never seen love before.

In discussing the incident K said it is not unusual for a gypsy’s only experience with touch to be harsh, from the scourge of anger or the hard discipline of a parent or spouse frustrated at the impotence imposed by poverty.

“Maybe it’s been a long time since the older woman felt the simple touch of kindness,” K says. “Maybe she has no one who snuggles up and says ‘I’m here simply because I love you.’ The tears mean something. I just wish I knew the whole story.”

K says all the noise and chaos of village life fell silent behind the tableau being painted between two strangers, with a brush of love on a canvass of common humanity. The only sound, he said, was the drop of tears into Dana’s lap.

K is inspired by the faith of gypsy Christians who see the hand of God caring for them in the worst of circumstances. A Hungarian translator keeps going back to the village “because I feel like I’m climbing a ladder to heaven every time I’m around them.”

K and Dana keep going back. They’re looking for others to help them hold the ladder.

(This story printed in the November-December 2014 issue of Herald, a publication of Baptist News Global)