Boston quiz recap: The Christmahanukwanzayear Spectacular, Monday, Dec 16

Happy everything, everyone! And bless you, so many of you, for coming out for Monday night's Boston edition of our Christmahanukwanzayear Spectacular (at our beloved, beloved Oberon). We packed a lot of holiday trivia excellence into that night, so let's get to it…

First of all, almost all of you impressed with your scoring prowess: While the top four teams pulled way ahead by game's end, only 14 points separated fifth place and 20th place. I realize that's kind of meaningless to anyone not suffused in the architecture of the BQT (read: pretty much everyone on earth but me), but it's my way of patting you all on the back, so take it.

And last night, it was especially important not to bottom out scoring-wise, since as part of the tremendous prize haul—not only the $200 cash jackpot, not only the passes to Oberon's Donkey Show and On Location Tours, but also tons of nifty holiday-themed stocking stuffers—we had this lovely bit of "reading" material for the last-place squad:

Props to the losing team—Choco Chip Cookies, who looked like a nice young couple—for accepting their "prize" with grace and at least waiting till they'd left Oberon to throw it in the trash.

Fun stuff with a lot more than just Xmas: I managed to pack in New Year's, the Solstice, Bodhi Day, Boxing Day, a look back at '13 with "The Year in Manipulative Movie Trailers," "Holiday Music at Variable Speeds," a four-parter about the holiest of holy days, Festivus, and—the return of the stand-up/sit-down format as seen at our tenth-anniversary ten-hour quiz marathon—"Hanukkah or Kwanzaa?" And—yep—Smart-Ass Points. The second verse of "The Dreidel Song" goes, "It has a lovely body/With legs so short and thin/And when it gets all tired/It complains a lot." The 2013 film this trailer is from…

…is "NBC's The Sound of Music Live." And when I asked you to finish the old joke about the old Jewish women asking various rabbis to say a broche over a Christmas tree, a lot of you went for the inevitable circumcision joke. L'chaim!

So, with the heavy competition, I was hella curious who would make it into the finale. Returning champs the Ghost of Christmas Future Perfect Subjunctive was in there, frequent winners Peter O'Toole Kicks Ass!! squeezed in, and joining them was never-winners (but contenders, and champs of the "Hanukkah or Kwanzaa?" round) All Alone for Xmas Trivia (not a solo player, it turns out). For the first time ever, every single player tagged following the initial question, but to no avail for two teams: The dead-people honorers won it on two straight questions (the answers were "Swahili" and "Mary J. Blige," in case you're curious).

The standings:
1. Peter O'Toole Kicks Ass!
2. All Alone for Xmas Trivia
3. The Ghost of Christmas Future Perfect Subjunctive
4. I Made It Out of Clay
5. The Monstrous Humanoids
6. Sparklepony
7. Team Christian Hegemony
8. Ice Cream Anti-Social
9. Rudolph the Red Communist Reindeer/We're the Experts (Holiday Remix) (tie)

NEXT: Only three weeks away, we begin 2014—first Monday of (nearly) every month at Oberon—with the Boston edition of our 2013 Flashback Trivia-O-Rama. All about the year that is/was, still free admission, still fabulous prizes of cash and otherwise. Keep jingling, friends.