Not Having a Merry Christmas Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) is well known for his fairy tales, several of which are tinged with melancholy, but few as deeply pessimistic as 'The Fir Tree', first published in December of 1844. The story tells of a small fir tree who longs to grow up and be big like those around him.

Then he wants to go wherever the others go who disappear each winter, sure that it must be exciting. When he is finally selected, he realises that he will be leaving his friends behind, which saddens him, but he anticipates a fantastic future.

Indeed, Christmas Eve, when he is beautifully decorated and admired, is all he had hoped for, but the following day sees him exiled to the attic, where he is visited by mice who enjoy listening to him recount the events of Christmas Eve.

Then comes spring, and he is carried out into the courtyard. Just as he anticipates that he will finally have a chance to really enjoy life, he is chopped up for fuel. As the tree starts to burn, he reflects on his life, and regrets the fact that he never really appreciated the pleasures offered at each stage, because he was so focussed on the future.

Answer: Ten of the most miserable people to be found

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) is known for his morality tales, often set in his native New England. 'The Christmas Banquet', published in the 1846 collection of short stories titled 'Mosses from an Old Manse', described a man's bequest that the executors of his estate should, annually, invite ten incredibly miserable people to a meal, over which they would share their stories of misery, and complain about how dreadful the world was.

The founder's skeleton, suitably garbed and sporting a festive wreath, presided over the feast.

The executors decided to invite a different batch of people each year, because of the extent of human unhappiness. The one exception was the annual inclusion of Gervayse Hastings, whose presence at the first banquet was questioned by the other participants, because he seemed so happy and carefree. Forty years later, as he was dying, he revealed the reason for his presence - he was so incapable of sharing the emotions of another human being that even hearing the annual recital of woes had left him untouched.

His lack of any understanding of humanity left him with no hope of an afterlife, and a sense of himself as merely a shadow, lacking reality.

Answer: The bride and groom first met at the party

You might think that the connection was due to nostalgic recall of a happy event five years earlier, but that was far from the case. The bride was the beautiful daughter of a wealthy businessman, who threw the party to impress his colleagues, and hoped to establish links with high society. One of the honoured guests was Julian Mastakovich, clearly a man of elegance, who was heard (by the narrator) speculating about how large the girl's dowry would be if properly invested for the five years that would need to pass before she could be married.

The fact that she was beautiful was a nice bonus, and we could see him establishing his claims with the family. The girl, however, was less than impressed, especially as she saw how badly he treated the governess's son, a friend of hers, because of his lower social status. Seen in hindsight, the party was full of poor omens for the unfortunate lass.

Answer: The Gift of the Magi

All of these stories by O. Henry feature a surprise twist, but only 'The Gift of the Magi' is set explicitly at Christmas. The story was first published in 'The New York Sunday World' in December 1905, with the title 'Gifts of the Magi'; it was then included in the 1906 anthology 'The Four Million'. Della and Jim have no money to buy special gifts for each other, but each has one valuable possession which they sell in order to buy a gift.

Unfortunately, Della sold her hair to buy a fob chain for Jim's treasured pocket watch, while he sold the watch to buy her a set of hair combs.

The story is not all sad, however - the two young people gain a new insight into how much they love each other, and appreciation for the sacrifice each was prepared to make for the other.

Answer: Santa shook a large rattle at him, and laughed when he was frightened.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) is probably most familiar from his poetry, especially his work in developing the form of jazz poetry. However, he wrote in a wide range of genres, including the 1934 story cycle 'The Ways of White Folks'. A story cycle is a collection of stories which each stand on their own, but which taken together form a larger novel-like whole, rather like a series of still shots taken from a movie, conveying the overall original, but leaving the reader/viewer to fill in the connecting bits. The stories are generally pessimistic in the way they convey relations between white and black members of society. 'One Christmas Eve' starts with Arcie having to stay late at work because the people who employ her are late coming home, and she gets increasingly worried about having time to do her Christmas shopping once they do return and pay her. Because the family had spent too much on themselves, and were short of cash, she didn't get her full pay, so had even less to spend than she had expected. Because her landlady also had shopping to do, she took Joe with her, and left him to wait while she purchased presents. Bored, Joe wandered back to the well-lit movie theatre they had passed earlier, but which his mother had explained they were not allowed to enter. Lured in by the gift-giving Santa in the lobby, Joe went in anyway, and worked his way to the front of the crowd, hoping to be given a sweet treat. Instead, the Santa picked up a large rattle and shook it threateningly in Joe's face, laughing as he did so. Joe ran out into the street, where Arcie eventually found him, in tears, and reinforced the sad lesson in racism he has just experienced.

"'Huh! That wasn't no Santa Claus,' Arcie explained. 'If it was, he wouldn't a-treated you like that. That's a theatre for white folks-I told you once-and he's just a old white man.'
'Oh..., said little Joe."

Answer: He was drunk on the job.

This story was first published in 'The New Yorker' on Christmas Eve in 1949, and was included in the 1978 collection 'The Stories of John Cheever', which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Charlie started the day feeling sorry for himself, as practically the only person in the world who had to get up early and work on Christmas Day.

He shared that feeling with the various tenants who used the elevator during the morning, repeatedly telling them that he wouldn't get Christmas dinner because he had to run the elevator.

They all felt sorry for him, and he ended up with 14 dinners, each accompanied by an alcoholic drink and followed by dessert. This resulted in an intoxicated display that terrified a passenger, and led to his dismissal.

It also caused Charlie to feel less sorry for himself, and a bit guilty for having taken advantage of the residents, who had all given him a present, the best they could manage on short notice. He was especially guilty about the toys he received from the people to whom he had said he had children, and decided to give them to his landlady's children.

This left him feeling virtuous, but he didn't realise that they had already received so many gifts that they didn't know what to do with the latest batch. Then his landlady thought of a needy family she knew, and set off to regift the toys, hurrying to get there because 'she knew that we are bound, one to another, in licentious benevolence for only a single day, and that day was nearly over.'

Answer: A wealthy man adopts an orphan, and makes him his heir.

Raymond Carver (1938-1988) did not publish this story during his lifetime - it appeared in 2001, in 'Call Me If You Need Me: The Uncollected Fiction and Other Prose', a collection of short stories and non-fiction writing. Myers is a writer who is having trouble coming up with an idea, but who refuses to go to his wife's office Christmas party.

Instead, they meet for a drink before deciding to visit the Morgans, whom they had never met. The reason for the visit becomes clear after the third story is delivered by the increasingly hostile Morgans - it was their house that the Myers had lived in, and who were accused of bringing in a cat (forbidden because Mrs Morgan is asthmatic), and treating the household contents with disrespect.

The other two stories were offered as possible ideas for Myers to use as the springboard for a short story. All in all, an unsuccessful visit, which suggested that nobody was heading for a happy holiday season.

Answer: 390

All right, it's more of a memoir than a story, but it is short, and it is related to a negative take on Christmas. The author convinced a photographer friend to help him take photos of abandoned Christmas trees, which seemed to him to capture the sense of despair prevalent then, shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy.

In 'What Are You Going to Do with 390 Photographs of Christmas Trees?' he recalls a project undertaken because the abandoned trees seemed like a meaningful metaphor. As he explained to his photographer friend, '"'Christmas is only skin deep,' I said. 'Why don't we take hundreds of pictures of Christmas trees that are abandoned in the streets? We'll show the despair and abandonment of Christmas by the way people throw their trees out.'" Why 390? That was just the moment when they felt they had achieved their goal.

Answer: A woman's dismembered legs

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) was a central figure in the artistic movement called the Beat Generation, a movement of the 1950s which rejected traditional narrative structures along with contemporary social standards, and considered that indulgence in drugs and sexual experimentation opened one to spiritual insights. Along with Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg, he produced work which (after more than a little litigation) led to relaxation of obscenity laws in the United States. 'A Junky's Christmas' first appeared in the 1989 collection 'Interzone', and in 1993 Burroughs recorded himself reading it.

This recording was later used as the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's claymation film of the story. Danny the Carwiper, freshly released from a short-term incarceration, is trying to find some heroin to make Christmas tolerable.

When he discovers the legs inside the suitcase, he is repulsed, but desperate enough to just dump them on the ground, and find someone to buy the empty suitcase.

Unfortunately, even with some cash he cannot locate any heroin on the street, so finagles some morphine from a suspicious doctor by pretending to be in great pain. The money is used to rent a room where he will be able to inject himself and experience the anticipated high. However, when he discovers that the person in the room next to him is in agony with kidney stones (and unable to get medical help because he is suspected of faking the pain), he sacrifices his morphine. His reward for this selfless act is an 'immaculate fix', the sensation produced by injection of an opiate drug achieved without any chemicals involved. So, in a rather bleak way, Danny prepares for a Christmas that will be less unpleasant than he had anticipated.

Answer: A smooth slide from a low pitch to a higher one

The title reflects the steadily-increasing pressures faced by Graham, a lawyer whose bad investment decisions mean he and his wife Leigh will almost certainly be forced to move out of their Fifth Avenue apartment. She is a former concert cellist, who developed tinnitus which forced her retirement, and she sold her much loved cello to help the family's finances. Graham spent money he didn't have to buy her a replacement, because she was so unhappy without an instrument.

But that was only part of his woes.

The fact that he had, a few weeks earlier, had a one-night stand with a friend of the family who lived in the same apartment building, and was seen going to the other apartment by the doorman, means that we sense a growing threat to his marriage. Either the friend will confess to Leigh (both because they are friends, and because Graham refused an invitation for a second dalliance) or the doorman, angry about a reduced Christmas bonus, will. What starts as a cosy domestic scene with Graham heading out to buy a Christmas tree develops into a situation full of impending tragedy, which is only heightened when the tree falls over at 4am, and has to be wrestled back into something resembling its original shape. Will Graham's marriage ever resume anything like its original shape?