Thank you to everyone who took part.
The final rankings are in this post.
viewtopic.php?p=923080#923080

 

Thank you, Sherlockx. It was a nice idea and wonderfully executed. Those who participated sure had some research to do, and those who didn't... will do next time. Err... an Easter Quiz? Or something about the Olympic games? I'm sure your twisted mind is working again...

In the meantime, winners have been paid. Would you mind to post full list of questions and answer now, please?

Thanks again. Quizzes'R you!

G & a - Services and Contests
(Anything you want, you got it... - R. Orbison)

Ok here are the questions again with the answers below

1) Who described St. Nicholas as a "Peddler"
2) What do sailors have in common with Christmas?
3) What is the significance of finding a dried bean in your cake at the end of Christmas?
4) Who found a princely ruby in his Christmas dessert?
5) Can you name St. Nicholas' horse?
6) Can you name St. Nicholas' butcher
7) In November 2011 an icon of St. Nicholas was placed higher than ever before. Where?
8 )Mr. Peterson took home a goose which had been abandoned on the Tottenham Court Road in the early hours of Christmas morning. Mrs. Peterson plucked and cleaned it. They then both became very excited. Why?
9) On the 7th.December someone turned on Christmas lights in the shape of a fir tree. The lights use 8.5km of cable. Where is it & how were the lights turned on?
10) Why is there a suggestion that Santa's red & white suit symbolises a mushroom?
11) What is the conspiracy theory relating to "The 12 days of Christmas" song?
12) According to popular belief, which famous Christmas carol was first sung accompanied by guitar only because the organ had broken?
13) The very last journey of the wise men was by sea. Where to and what is the carol that refers to that journey?
14) Who is Dunder?
15) When a choir sings carols how should they dance?
16) According to research carried out by a Scottish university professor why might a Christmas candle be an ideal gift for Marilyn Monroe? ( No rude answers please)
17) Where in the Bible could you read about cutting down a tree, trimming it and then decorating it with silver & gold?
18) Italian & Russian traditions have a poor lonely woman searching for the baby Jesus. What are their names?
19) Which country associates Tinsel with Spiders?
20) With the blossom of which tree did the first European settlers in New Zealand decorate their homes at Christmas?
21) What was the only Christmas present given by Aunt Marge to Harry Potter?
22) In which book does Father Christmas Give a party a tray on which there is tea for five ready to be poured ?
23) What was wrong with the Christmas card given to Susan Sto Helit by her grandfather?
24) Where would you challenge Santa to a bowling match?
25) What are the candle powered wooden Christmas decorations called?
26) This famous Christmas musical entertainment involves coffee, chocolate, candy canes, marzipan and tea. Name it and who wrote it.
27) Which city has its Christmas tree in a lagoon?
28)You all know Good King Wenceslas but where is his army?
29) Santa can only deliver presents on Christmas Day. How many hours does he have to deliver presents in?
30) What links Charles Dickens with Xanadu?
31) Who is the prickly person from Christmas Island?

And here are the answers:

1) And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.
Clement Clarke Moore (1779 - 1863) wrote the poem Twas the night before Christmas
2) St. Nicholas is the Patron Saint of sailors.
3) TWELFTH NIGHT CAKE In the GREAT HOUSES, into the cake was baked a dried Bean and a Pea Whoever got the bean became King of the Revels for the night, In smaller homes,Whoever got the bean was supposed to be a kind of guardian angel for that family for the year,
4) Colonel Lacey, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding Poirot (A Christie)
5) the horse has been named Amerigo in The Netherlands and Slechtweervandaag in Flanders
6) Le Père Fouettard
7) Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov installed an icon of Saint Nicholas on the ISS (International Space Station) in November 2011.
8 )A Blue Carbuncle was found in its crop. Sherlock Holmes The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
9) Italy's Mount Ingino (near the town of Gubbio) is home to what is billed as "the world's largest Christmas tree display They were turned on by the Pope using anm iPad 2
10) but there is an alternative theory, and that is that Santa's outfit is meant to symbolise a type of magic mushroom which has a red cap and white dots. A guy called Patrick Harding from Sheffield University came up with this theory a few years ago. Apparently in Lappland, where Santa is supposed to come from, people used to use magic mushrooms to get high, long before alcohol appeared on the scene. Traditionally only the village holy man would be able to take the mushrooms "neat" so to speak. They were too strong for the villagers and for the reindeer. So to get high, the villagers used to eat the yellow snow that the shaman had relieved himself because it still contained traces of muscimol which is what was in the magic mushrooms. So Santa the might be an old village shaman who cries out "Ho Ho Ho" because he's high on magic mushrooms!
11) "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was written in England as one of the "catechism songs" to help young Catholics learn the tenets of their faith - a memory aid, when to be caught with anything in writing indicating adherence to the Catholic faith could not only get you imprisoned, it could get you hanged, or shortened by a head
12) Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, Silent Night According to the song's history provided by Austria's Silent Night Society, one supposition is that the church organ was no longer working so that Mohr and Gruber therefore created a song for accompaniment by guitar.
13) "I Saw Three Ships (Come Sailing In)" The reference to three ships is thought to originate in the three ships that bore the purported relics of the Biblical magi to Cologne Cathedral in the 12th century
14) Who is Dunder? Original name of Donner the reindeer in the poem Twas the night before Christmas
15) The word carol is derived from the Old French word carole, a circle dance accompanied by singers
16) Researchers from the University of St Andrews discovered that about 1.5 million tiny diamond nanoparticles are created every second as a candle burns. Marilyn Monroe sang the song Diamonds are a girls best friend
17)Jeremiah 10:2-4 "Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen.... For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not."
18)Italy's La Befana, Russia's The Legend of Baboushka
19)Germany the legend of the Christmas Spider
20)The Pōhutukawa (Metrosideros excelsa) or New Zealand Christmas Tree,The first settlers used pohutukawa blossom to decorate their homes at Christmas time, regarding it as a New Zealand substitute for holly, and it was they who first applied the now common name of Christmas tree.
21)Between 1985 and 1990, Marge spent Christmas at Privet Drive. She brought a computerised robot for Dudley and a box of dog biscuits for Harry.
22)The lion, the witch & the wardrobe
23)The snow had melted and the robin flew away, The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
24)Elf Bowling computer game.
25)Christmas Pyramid : Weihnachtspyramide
26)The Nutcracker Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
27)RIO DE JANEIRO The Bradesco Seguros Christmas Tree, the world's largest floating Christmas tree
28)An enduring legend claims a huge army of knights sleep inside Blaník, a mountain in Czechia. The knights will awake and under the command of St. Wenceslaus and bring aid to the Czech people when they face ultimate danger
29) 48 hours if he starts off in the first time zone
30) Coleridge wrote Xanadu and also wrote a poem "A Christmas Carol" the same title as Dicken's book
31) sonic the hedgehog