Deloitte’s big Christmas quiz 2025
The 2025 Deloitte Christmas Economics Quiz by chief economist, Ian Stewart and team
The Christmas quiz offers a test of your knowledge of the festive season, economics and politics, in 12 questions. The answers and a brief explanation of the factors at work are provided at the end.
1) Which British politician (past and present) charges the most for a personalised video
message on Cameo (as of 4 December)?
a. Nigel Farage, Reform Party leader
b. Ann Widdicombe, former MP for Maidstone and The Weald
c. John Bercow, former Speaker of the House of Commons
d. Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North and founder of Your Party
2) English author Charles Dickens is credited with reviving interest in Christmas
traditions during the Victorian period, partly due to the publication of A Christmas
Carol in 1843. In the novella, set in the early 1840s, Scrooge’s clerk Bob Cratchit is
paid 15 shillings a week. Assuming this equates to an annual salary of £39 and 6
shillings, how much would this salary in 1842 be worth today after adjusting for
inflation?
a. £3.87
b. £387
c. £3,879
d. £38,790
3) Which one of the following Christmas puddings came top in Which? Magazine’s blind
taste test this year?
a. Waitrose
b. Lidl
c. Aldi
d. Tesco
4) Which is the world’s most liveable city in 2025, according to the Economist liveability
index?
a. Melbourne
b. Osaka
c. Vienna
d. Copenhagen
5) Rank the following works in order of length from shortest to longest:
a. The UK tax code
b. The Lord of the Rings
c. The complete works of Shakespeare
d. The King James Bible
6) According to the US-based National Christmas Tree Association, about 350,000 acres
or 1,416 square kilometres are devoted to the cultivation of Christmas trees in the US.
Should these growers decide to declare independence, which of the following
countries or territories would the new Christmas Tree Republic be most comparable to
in land area?
a. Faroe Islands
b. Switzerland
c. Monaco
d. Belgium
7) UK prime minister Keir Starmer was told off by a teacher during a visit to a primary
school for doing what?
a. Running in the corridors
b. Jumping the lunch queue
c. Performing the ‘6-7’ meme, which is banned at the school
d. Speaking while the teacher was talking
8) The UK’s inflation rate has been running at nearly double the Bank of England target
rate of 2% this year. However, which individual food item in the basket of goods and
services that make up the consumer price index saw the highest price increase in the
year to October?
a. Beef
b. Chocolate
c. Frozen seafood
d. Olive oil
9) Last month the government announced a new curriculum that will take effect from2028. Can you solve this (adapted) question from a 2017 GCSE maths paper: Joseph is 5 years older than Mary. The innkeeper is twice as old as Joseph. The sum of their three ages is 103. Find the ratio of ages between Mary, Joseph and the innkeeper.
a. 22:27:54
b. 22:27:44
c. 24:29:58
d. 24:29:48
10) Which of these names is not a character created by Charles Dickens?
a. Wackford Squeers
b. Mr M’Choakumchild
c. Charity Pecksniff
d. Hans Gruber
11) According to a poll by YouGov, what percentage of people have Yorkshire puddings
with their Christmas lunch or dinner?
a. 23%
b. 49%
c. 67%
d. 84%
12) The following are popular Christmas films with vowels and spaces removed. For
example, “The Snowman” becomes THSNWMN. Which films are shown below?
a. THGRNCH
b. THPLRXPRSS
c. DHRD
d. HMLN
e. TSWNDRFLLF
f. LF
g. THHLDY
h. NTVTY
ANSWERS:
1) Answer: C, John Bercow. Mr Bercow usually charges £83 for a personalised video
message, averaging five minutes in length and usually starting with his famous “or-
der” exclamation. Meanwhile, Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, with over 1800
reviews of his Cameo messages, charges a slightly lower rate of £78. Prices for a
short message (averaging one-minute) from Ann Widdicombe would incur a cost of
£34. While Jeremy Corbyn does not have a known Cameo account, Mr Corbyn did
recently star in a local pantomime, Wicked Witches, playing the Wizard of Oz-lington
2) Answer: C £3,879. Although Bob Crachit’s wage was not out of line with average
earnings at the time, adjusting 15 shillings a week for inflation captures both how
much Mr Cratchit was stretching his living supporting six children but also how much
living standards have improved over the intervening years.
3) Answer: B, Lidl. Lidl came top out of ten premium own label Christmas puddings in a
blind taste test covering appearance, aroma, texture and flavour. Despite being the
joint-cheapest brand tested (£1 per 100g, vs Tesco’s offering at £1.88 per 100g), Lidl’s
deluxe 12-month matured Christmas is said to have the “perfect balance of sweetness
and spice”. Which? also reported that steaming a Christmas pudding is preferable to
using a microwave to prevent it from drying out.
4) Answer: D, Copenhagen. The Danish city has unseated Vienna for the top spot of the
ranking this year, scoring top marks for stability, education and infrastructure. Vienna
and Zurich ranked joint second, while Geneva was the only other European city in the
top 10. All UK cities covered in the index (London, Manchester and Edinburgh) fell
down the list, while the Australian cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide all
featured in the top 10. Damascus was again ranked as the least liveable city.
5) Answer: BDCA. The correct order is The Lord of the Rings (481,000 words), the King
James Bible (821,000 words), the complete works of Shakespeare (950,000 words)
and then the UK tax code. The code runs to at least 10m words and is thought to be
the longest in the world. It now spans across 23,522 pages and has doubled in length
since 2006. Notably, all the above works pale in comparison with Wikipedia, now
thought to be over 5 billion words in length.
6) Answer: A, Faroe Islands. The self-governing Danish territory has a land area of
1,393 square kilometres while the other territories are substantially larger or smaller.
The land devoted to the cultivation of Christmas trees in the US is minor compared to
that of golf courses (At 2m acres similar in size to Puerto Rico) or the area devoted to
pasture and feed crops for livestock (At 781m acres similar in size to India).
7) Answer: C, performing the ‘6-7’ meme. While visiting a primary school last month, Mr
Starmer performed the gesture accompanying the ‘6-7’ meme, which incidentally has
been named Dictionary.com’s word of the year, after a pupil commented they were on
pages 6 and 7 of a reading book. Following the joke, the teacher commented that
children as usually told off for replicating the meme, to which Mr Stamer apologised
and jokingly said “I didn’t start it, Miss!”.
8) Answer: A, beef. Beef and veal prices rose by 24% in the year to October, the fastest-
rising component of the consumer price index, according to the ONS. Sources say
increased demand for beef, rising feed costs and declining herd sizes have all
contributed to the price rise. Chocolate prices also increased notably this year, by
10%, due to poor weather affecting cocoa harvests in Ghana and Ivory Coast, two of
the largest producers. While the price of olive oil was one of the fastest rising
components of the index last year, it is now the fastest falling food item in the index,
with prices having fallen 11% so far this year due to an increase in supply following
improved harvests in Spain.
9) Answer: A, 22:27:54. Assigning Mary’s age as X, the age of Joseph and the
innkeeper would therefore be X+5 and 2X+10, respectively. As the three ages sum to 103, solving for X would give Mary an age of 22, Joseph 27, and the innkeeper 54.
Alternatively, answer A contains the only age combination to sum to 103.
10) Answer: D, Hans Gruber – a baddie played by Alan Rickman from the 1988 film Die
Hard, the first in this franchise and set on Christmas Eve. Wackford Squeers is a cruel
headmaster of Dotheboys Hall in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, Mr M’Choakumchild is a
teacher in Hard Times, and Charity Pecksniff features as the eldest daughter of Seth
Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit.
11) Answer: B, 49%. The country remains divided on the issues of whether Yorkshire
puddings are an acceptable accompaniment at Christmas, with a near-equal split.
The split can partially be explained by nearly a quarter of people eating beef on
Christmas day, for which Yorkshire puddings are a traditional accompaniment. Those
under the age of 50 are more likely than not to favour Yorkshire puddings at
Christmas. Meanwhile, more than three quarters of UK Christmas dinners this year
will include roast potatoes, carrots and gravy as side-dishes.
12) Answers:
a. The Grinch
b. The Polar Express
c. Die Hard
d. Home Alone
e. It’s a Wonderful Life
f. Elf
g. The Holiday
h. Nativity!