What Holly Jolly Names! Trivia Quiz

Answer: American football

Quarterback Bart Starr (1934-2019) played his entire NFL career for the Green Bay Packers (1956-71), and served the team as a coach during a number of subsequent seasons. He was Super Bowl champion twice, and NFL most valuable player in 1966, along with a host of other achievements.

Defensive tackle Demarcus Christmas was drafted by the Seattle Seahawks in 2019. Defensive tackle Johnny Jolly was drafted by the Packers in 2006, and played for them on and off between that year and 2013, with some enforced absences due to off the field problems. Mike Tannenbaum became executive vice-president of football operations for the Miami Dolphins in 2015, having served in various capacities for a number of other teams

Christmas connections, other than the obvious:
Starr - a reference to the star followed by the three wise men
Jolly - often used in reference to Santa Claus
Tannenbaum - German for Christmas tree

Answer: Alpine skiing

Frenchwoman Carole Merle had her greatest success as a skier in giant slalom and Super-G, winning gold in the former at the 1993 World Championships and silver in the same event in 1989. She also had an Olympic silver in Super-G (1992) and World Championship Super-G silver in 1991. She retired in 1994.
American Holly Flanders appeared in two Winter Olympics (1980 and 1984) for her country and competed in a number of World Cup seasons, recording three victories in downhill races during the early 1980s. Klaus Kroll was born in Austria in 1980, and won the Downhill World Cup championship in 2012.

Christmas connections:
Carole - for those songs sung at Christmastime
Holly - a plant often associated with the season
Klaus - alternate spelling of Claus (as in Santa Claus)

Answer: Football/Soccer

Cecil Christmas (1886-1916) was an amateur who made a few appearances for the Southampton team in 1912, retiring after an injury ended his already unpromising football (soccer) career. He was killed on the Somme in 1916, as an officer in the King's Royal Rifle Corps.
Jesus Navas began his senior career in 2003, and has played at a club level for Sevilla and Manchester City, and has represented Spain over forty times since 2009.
Striker Noel Hunt has played for a number of teams in Ireland, Scotland and England since 2001, and has represented the Republic of Ireland (his national team) at under 21 and senior level.

Roque Santa Cruz, from Paraguay, has played in Germany, England and Spain as well as in his home country, which he has represented internationally over 100 times, at various age levels.

Christmas connections:
Probably doesn't need to be explained here.

Answer: Hockey (Ice)

Canadian forward Cherie Piper has played for a number of teams in the Canadian Women's Hockey League, and has represented Canada as a member of the women's ice hockey team at three Olympics (2002, 2006, 2010). The team won gold each time.

The Dallas Stars began life as a National Hockey League expansion team in 1967, at which time they were the Minnesota North Stars. The word "north" was dropped from the name when the team moved to Dallas in 1993. A Stanley Cup championship came in the 1998-99 season.

The Los Angeles Kings were also part of the 1967 NHL expansion. The Great One, Wayne Gretzky, played for them from 1988 until 1996, and led them to their first appearance in the Stanley Cup final series (which they lost to Montreal) in 1993.

Christmas connections:
Piper - reference to the gift of "pipers piping" in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas"
Stars - reference to the star followed by the wisemen
Kings - another way of describing the wisemen

Answer: Basketball

Karima Christmas-Kelly, a forward, was drafted by the Washington Mystics of the Women's National Basketball Association in 2011, and has played for a number of WNBA teams as well as in South Korea. Her college playing was done at Duke.
Nerlens Noel played for the Kentucky Wildcats during his college career, before moving on to the NBA with Philadelphia and later Dallas and Oklahoma City.
The Sacramento Kings started life as the Rochester Seagrams, way back in 1923, using a number of names before they became the Rochester Royals in 1945, the Cincinnati Royals in 1957, the Kansas City-Omaha Kings in 1972, the KC Kings three years after that, eventually moving to Sacramento in 1985.

Christmas connections:
Christmas and Noel - direct references to the holiday
Kings - as previously noted

Answer: Golf

Englishwoman Holly Clyburn turned professional in 2012, and has competed on the Ladies European Tour and the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) Tour.
Colombian Jesus Amaya has represented his country in the World Cup of Golf at least five times since turning pro in 1991. Noel Ratcliffe, an Australian, turned pro in 1974 and played in European and Australasian tours. He has had some success on the European Seniors Tour with at least eight wins since 1997.

Christmas connections:
Holly and Noel - as previously described
Jesus - direct reference to the child at the centre of the celebration

Answer: Baseball

[ o ] Gift Ngoepe was the first South African-born player in the history of major league baseball, when he debuted as an infielder with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2017.
[ o ] Jesus Alou, an outfielder whose playing career spanned 1963-1979, was one of a trio of brothers from the Dominican Republic who all had successful careers in the majors. In 1963, Jesus and his older brothers Felipe and Matty all played for the San Francisco Giants as teammates.
[ o ] Right-handed pitcher Neftali Feliz, also from the Dominican Republic, debuted with the Texas Rangers in August 2009, and saved 40 games the following season breaking a record for rookie pitchers (for which designation he still qualified).

Christmas connections:
Gift - reference to gifts under the tree, or to the gifts brought by the wisemen
Jesus - as already described
Feliz - as in the Spanish greeting "Feliz Navidad" ("Merry Christmas"), or the song of that title

Answer: Athletics/Track and Field

[ o ] Pole vaulter Holly Bradshaw, from Preston, Lancashire, has represented Great Britain at the Olympic Games in 2012 and 2016, finishing sixth and fifth respectively.
[ o ] Noel Carroll (a double helping of Christmas names)(1941-1998) was a Dublin-born middle distance runner who competed in the 1964 and 1968 Olympics, representing Ireland.
[ o ] Ruth Christmas (1904-2001) was a pioneer of women's middle distance running, at a time when even 800 metres was thought to be too much for a woman's body to endure. She and her sister, Esther, also a runner, did much to prove that theory wrong.

Answer: Hockey (Field)

As a member of the Hockeyroos, the Australian national women's field hockey team, Holly Evans has represented her country in both indoor and outdoor tournaments, including the 2011 Oceania Cup, and the Women's Hockey Indoor World Cup in 2011 and 2015.

Canadian player Holly Stewart has received a bronze medal from the 2015 Pan American Games field hockey competition, and silver from the 2019 Pan Am Games, at each of which she was a member of the Canadian team.

Christmas connection to Holly as a holiday plant.

Answer: Ski Jumping

Masahiko Harada was said to have gained the nickname "Happy" at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, in his home country, after making a record breaking jump that helped Japan to its first ski jumping team gold medal. It also helped erased the memory of a disappointing effort in Lillehammer four years earlier, that had dropped the team to silver position. The fact that he almost always seemed to be smiling also helped.

East German Klaus Ostwald had some success in the 1980s, in particular in the Four Hills Tournament, held in December and January each season, on hills in Austria and Germany. In 1983-84 he finished second to his countryman Jens Weissflog, and the following season he was third, behind Weissflog and the Finn Matti Nykaenen.

Christmas connections:
Klaus has already been described.
Happy was a reference to the greeting "Happy Christmas" sometimes used instead of the "Merry" greeting.