Rank the Holidays From Worst To Best

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

The purpose of this is simple. Rate your holidays from worst to best. I know that many posters are not Christian or American. Include ratings of your own. Include short commentary about why you feel that way.

(7) Thanksgiving - Thanksgiving is the worst holiday possible. It claims to be the traditional harvest holiday but it occurs way too late for that. Roasted turkey is simply not good. People say that they like it but they really don’t. If they did, people would make it year round which they don’t. It occurs on a Thursday which is ludicrous. I give a huge thumbs down to this one. It should be abolished. Thanksgiving occurs way too close to Christmas to make it a viable holiday.

(6) Labor Day - It marks the end of summer so this is not a cheerful holiday.

(5) Christmas - This old stalwart is fun and monumental but it also causes stress and chaos which are not good characteristics for a successful holiday.

(4) New Year’s Eve and New Years Day - These are good and low key holidays. New Years Eve can be a blast if you live that kind of lifestyle. New Years day is usually low key and suitable for everyone.

(3) Easter - Despite what most people think, this is the most important Christian holiday. The weather is turning more favorable, spring has started, and egg hunts and Easter clothes are fun.

(2) The 4th of July - Independence Day - One word…fireworks. It is in the middle of the summer and offers everything from cookouts and parties to beautiful displays at night.

(1) Halloween - This one sails in easily into first place. It is all about fun and family. You can treat it as a season if you want at least around here. Trick or treating lets you get you to know your neighbors and both kids and adults love it.

#2

7)Easter. You’d be surprised how uncomfortable not celebrating Easter is, as an atheist. Even in my supposedly progressive, liberal, and diverse community I am practically an outcast in my circle and at work for not observing it. I hate Easter!

6)Memorial Day. Means summer is coming and it’ll only get hotter from here. Boo.

5)Christmas. Always too much pressure and money and not enough real, genuine (free) fun. Bah humbug.

4)St. Patrick’s Day. Just an excuse for people to drink too much, drive home, and brag about it the next day.

3)Halloween. Ah, summer’s almost over, it’s even getting chilly at night. Plus, candy!

2)Thanksgiving. I love my family and being around them and it’s one holiday that’s important to all of us in the same way and we all love it.

1)My birthday. The one day of the year when it’s all about me. Yay, me!

#3

I don’t think that any of them is really objectionable, but I’ll have a go:

(9) New Year’s Day: it always seems to be stinking hot, and we have to spend several hours clearing away the detritus left by the blow-ins who invade our neighbourhood to watch the fireworks, and then “forget” to take their crap home with them.

(8) Australia Day (26 Jan): it signals the end of the Christmas/January holiday period, when work gets back to normal. It also means that February, my most loathed month (since it’s hot and humid) is upon us.

(7) Easter Monday: usually spent recovering from exhaustion after singing in the church choir for all of the Holy Week/Easter ceremonies.

(6) **Anzac Day **(25 Apr): Something had to be in the middle of the list.

(5) **Queen’s Birthday **(second Monday in June): the start of the cooler weather, which I like.

(4) **Labour Day **(first Monday in October - this coming weekend, in fact): always enjoyable, because it’s the first public holiday since June and you feel “about time”.

(3) Good Friday: the Easter weekend is the most important in the church’s year, and I love attending the ceremonies every year.

(2) & (1): Christmas Day and Boxing Day: they come at the end of the year, when you feel as though you’ve earned the break. And they mark the start of the summer holidays, when things get more relaxed. Plus you tend to catch up with family and friends.

#4

  1. Halloween: It’s a blast handing out candy to the TOTers, creating costumes, general spookiness, foodstuffs made with pumpkin, sweater weather, corn mazes and hayrides

  2. Thanksgiving: All about family with no consumerism, half the folks in the family I don’t want to hang out with the next day go out shopping; allowing me some smug quiet time to couch-surf, best weather, great eating, 4 day weekend

  3. Christmas: Family, it’s fun exchanging gifts, cookies, vacation time off work, charitable giving, as stressful as you allow it to be

  4. Labor Day: Nice enough little holiday that celebrates surviving summer

  5. NYE/NY day: Manufactured fun, it doesn’t feel like the beginning or end of anything, unlike spring or fall might, more fun when I was a kid out drinking with no responsibilities

  6. Memorial Day: Sucks because it’s about to be hot and I don’t like hot, who needs an excuse to barbecue, or remember people even, just a big meh

  7. 4th of July: Rah rah patriotism for a day, ooh sparkly, sweaty and too many mosquitos, fun only for the get togethers

  8. Easter: Christmaslite, religious folks inviting you to church, decorating eggs instead of cookies, foods not as good, but at least there’s a lot of chocolate and it’s sorta fun doing baskets

  9. St. Patricks day: Doesn’t even count in my head as a real holiday, there’s no religious or patriotic significance and it’s not a paid holiday, used to have fun making entire meals of green food when the kids were little though

#5

(6) Easter I don’t think I’ve celebrated this one in years. Eggs and bunnies? Really?
(5) New Years As a kid it was kind of boring. Stay up all night and make noise with pots and pans. Partying as an adult can be fun, but really you can party any weekend. It is a good time to stay home and play with the stuff you got for Christmas.
(4) Thanksgiving The more dedicated people in the family make it at least. We usually end up at a nice restaurant.
(3) 4th of July Always a home-town-y holiday for me. We have a picnic and watch the community fireworks. It’s one fo the few times my community does something together.
(2) Christmas It’s the one time all my family comes together. Also, I love how everything changes at Christmas time- there are lights and trees and music and everything seems a little special in the winter gloom.
(1) Halloween You get to dress up as something you’ve always wanted to be. Add to that the pagan undertones and general fun-having, and you have the best holiday ever.

#6

(I’m ranking these with the understanding that I still like having the days off work, even if I don’t like the actual holiday.)

8. Thanksgiving - it’s a huge production with no pay off.

7. New Year’s Eve/Day - you have to barricade yourself in your home in order to be spared the agony of amateurs on parade.

6. Memorial Day - They should just call this Stuck in Traffic Day and be done with it.

5. Easter - it’s nice enough for a random day, I like the candy. But overall, not the most memorable holiday.

4. Halloween - more candy, and fun costumes. A good time is had by all.

3. St. Patrick’s Day - I know this won’t be popular, but I love this holiday and have a blast every year.

2. Christmas - I like the music, the presents, oh yes and more candy. Also cookies. Having a holiday to celebrate gluttony is a-okay in my book. Also, I think it’s one of the best smelling holidays, with all the pine and mint and nutmeg.

1. 4th of July - thank goodness they wrote the Dec. of Ind. in the summer, because this would blow as a winter holiday. Beach, bonfire, beer, no shirt, no shoes. I think after you die, heaven is one big 4th of July party.

#7

Best: Halloween. Besides the fact that i’m creepy and would celebrate it every day if i got the chance, Halloween is just plain FUN. No religious glurge, no real consumer pressure, no uncomfortable forced family interaction or lame “traditions”.

Everything else…

Worst: A tie for Christmas and Easter. Christmas earns it’s placed as the foulest of holidays due to it’s omnipresent and creeping nature, religious infighting, and consumer pressure.
Easter ties with it for it’s sheer annoyance factor. I HATE not being able to get shit done on a weekend because everyone has decided to celebrate some nutball who thought he was god get nailed to a couple of planks two thousand years ago.

#8

Worst to best:

  1. Xmas. Cold, extremely annoying music repeated endlessly, presents expected, too much advertising with everything presented as a potential present, including cars (WTF? Who gets a new car as an Xmas present?). The part of it that’s a pagan bacchanal I could almost appreciate, but then there are those religious nuts claiming that Jesus is the reason for the season, a phrase that drives me quite crazy.

  2. New Years Eve/New Years Day. Still cold, big whoop over new year that’s completely arbitrary–hey, it could have been in July, now that would have been a fun time to dress up in very insubstantial clothes and spike heels. Navigating ice and snow in those heels, not so much. Also, you get to stay up past midnight–big whoop. You get to drink too much–big whoop. I can do those two things anytime.

  3. Valentine’s Day. Still cold. Romantic mush.

  4. Easter. Actually, now that I have a teenager I’m thinking Easter is just nothing. I probably won’t even know when it happens, what with not dyeing and hiding eggs.

  5. Thanksgiving. Beginning to get cold. On the plus side, turkey! and turkey leftovers! And Parker House rolls! We actually have turkey several times a year, but only on T-day and Xmas do we have Parker House rolls.

  6. St. Patrick’s Day. If the snow has melted, things could be turning green. Actually, although I’m not at all religious, I do generally plant something on St. P’s day and it generally grows well.

  7. Labor Day. End of summer, time to put away white shoes, pool closes (sob!). On the other hand it’s still warm and it’s a 3-day weekend so what’s not to like?

  8. Memorial Day. Pool opens! Summer just around the corner! Woohoo! (Big plus if it’s not snowing on Memorial Day.)

  9. Halloween! I love this one. Little kids dressed up cute, big kids dressed up scary, lots of leftover fun-size candy that everybody brings to the office. Downside: getting cold.

  10. Fourth of July! Yes! Bring on the air show. The fireworks. The BBQ. Parades! Sunburn. With any luck, another 3-day weekend. Usually nice and hot.

#9

7.) Labor Day/Memorial Day - Does anyone actually do anything to celebrate these holidays? I use them as a day to sleep until noon but other than that they serve no real purpose.

6.) St. Patrick’s Day - I love being Irish and all, but $25-$50 to get into an Irish themed pub that is free every other day of the year and food full of green dye do not a holiday make.

5.) Easter - Lots of chocolate and ham goes on sale! Other than that it is just a good excuse to take your family to brunch.

4.) Thanksgiving - I don’t like turkey or sweet potatoes but I love spending the whole day with my family and having several days in a row off of work!

3.) Valentine’s Day - SO MUCH CANDY! All the candy goes on sale the next day too so you get to have as much chocolate as you can carry home for almost no cost. If you have a significant other you can exchange small gifts and celebrate the fact that you love one another. If you are single you still have access to all that candy so it is still a great holiday.

2.) Halloween - The weather is cool and you get to dress up in costumes and they make Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the shape of pumpkins. You get to see all sorts of crazy costumed people out and about and, much like Valentine’s Day, the candy all goes on sale the day after.

1.) Christmas - Presents! Family! Snow! The Christmas display windows on 5th Avenue! Candy! Cats climbing the tree in the living room! Time off of work! It can get kind of stressful but overall it is my favorite holiday.

#10

Yeah, I imagine that Christmas in New York City is wonderful, just like in the movies. Anywhere else sucks.

#11

Ah, Lewis Black:

Chanukah used to be among my favorites. Eight nights, one present a night, with each night’s present more grandiose than the last, the anticipation was extraordinary.

Christmas is my favorite now, despite being perpetually unable to think of gifts or pay for them even if I could. The aura of relaxation and comfort in my mother’s house is a wonderful way to end the year. It doesn’t hurt that my boss gives us free PTO during the week between Christmas and New Year’s.

#12

Honorable Mention

Valentine’s Day isn’t a holiday. Easter should be bigger than it is - I mean I’m Greek and we have red eggs and it’s a Big Thing - but honestly I’ve completely forgotten it until after it happened once or twice. You know what ain’t half bad? MLK’s birthday, that’s what.

I’d Rather Be Working

  1. Halloween. I like the late autumn weather, but otherwise, take everything that everyone else in this thread loves about Halloween, and keep it away from me, please.

  2. Christmas. Christmas sucks. “Christmas is Family”, and it’s the extended part of the family that I see only a couple of times a year for a good reason. Christmas is going through the stupid ass ritual of stressing out over gifts and paying for gifts and not being able to run to the store to get anything quickly because there are tons of people everywhere. Positive points for Christmas music, but in general, yuck.

Neutral Holidays

  1. New Year’s Eve / Day. Who doesn’t like a good party? That said, this is often too much trouble for the amount of fun - say it’s 20% more fun than a really good random weekend, but 75% more planning and parades and crowds and other random crap that make it not really as worth it.

  2. 4th of July. This one can be fun, or it can be a 95 degree and humid hell on earth kind of day. I do like some of the New England patriotic tradition type stuff, and some years I really warm up on this one… and then the next year it’s just plain REALLY WARM, and it sucks.

Good Holidays

  1. Labor Day and/or Memorial Day. These are basically the same thing: a no-stress day off from work that is about barbecue and friends. The only way these could be better is if they were on Fridays instead of Mondays so you didn’t have to worry about going to work the next day.

  2. Thanksgiving. This is the best holiday. Turkey is delicious, and potatoes are delicious. The NFL is delicious, and the football in the backyard is delicious. For me personally, it’s a holiday that is about both close friends and close family, the people that I choose to be celebrating with… which is ESPECIALLY delicious. If more holidays were like Thanksgiving, I’d be a much happier person.

#13

New Years - I’ve worked every New Years for 4 years now.

4th of July - Fireworks are nice. But haven’t done the whole "summer BBQ thing in years.

St. Patricks Day - Nice to have a holiday for adults. Any excuse to drink beer is OK in my book.

**Thanksgiving ** - Grandma’s cooking. I love turkey, stuffing, and leftovers. Plenty of football to watch.

Christmas - Family gets together. More football. Gifts are fun. But mostly it’s a nice excuse to lounge around in your PJs and drink Irish Coffee all night long. It’s also the only holiday I get off from work. :frowning:

#14

Good holidays.

  1. Thanksgiving. My favorite. Why? It is the first day off in almost 2 months. Football all day.

  2. Christmas. The only thing I don’t like about Christmas is listening to all the Scrooges complain about it.

  3. Ash Wednesday/Good Friday/Easter. I love this time of the year. It is the best sports time of the year with the start of baseball, the Masters, and the NCAA tournament.

  4. Memorial Day. The start of summer and the good movies are out. Also, baseball is in full swing.

Neutral holidays.

  1. Labor Day. It certainly doesn’t mark the end of summer in Phoenix. It is also the time of year where I can tell the days are shorter. Still, it is a day off from work and the last one for a long time.

  2. New Years. Now that college football has ruined the bowl system by dragging them out over several days, New Years isn’t the same. Plus, it is the end of the holiday season that started with Thanksgiving. The start of the NFL playoffs is something to look forward to, however.

  3. 4th of July. By falling in the middle of the week, it usually means being short staffed at work for that whole week. Still, it usually marks the beginning of a slow time at work.

Bad Holidays.

  1. Martin Luther King day. We don’t need a holiday for King. Nuff said.

  2. Columbus Day. Not a day off from work. But banks are closed so that screws everything up. Plus, I’m sick of the political correctness wars over Columbus.

  3. Valentines Day. Don’t get me started.

  4. Mothers Day/Fathers Day. Sit down, shut up and hand over the roses. I hate Hallmark.

Horrible holidays.

  1. Patriot Day. Go to Hell, Bush.

  2. Secretaries Day. Time for the annual extortion at the office

  3. Halloween. “Why aren’t you wearing a costume…”

  4. St. Patricks Day. Save me from the fake Irish accents, please!

#15

Worst to best:

Mother’s Day/Father’s Day/Valentine’s Day: Nothing makes me want to say “I love you” less than being expected to say it.

St. Patrick’s Day: Too many things are green that shouldn’t oughta be.

4th of July: Miserably hot, people set off noisemaking things long past my bedtime.

Thanksgiving: In my family, if you’re female, you celebrate this holiday by cooking everything that has ever been served at a previous Thanksgiving, even if the only person that liked it is now dead. You serve it on all the best dishes. Then you eat, put away the food, and wash all those dishes by hand because they can’t go in the dishwasher. Then you rinse them, dry them, and put them away. In my family, if you’re male, you smoke, converse, eat, or watch TV. Male and female alike are treated to the annual Uncle David rant. Bets may be placed on whether “nigger” or “faggot” comes first this year. After the rant, Grandma may have a few stories for us about what sex was like with our grandfather. However, you get two days off work!

Easter: Possibly the best holiday as far as traditional candy goes, but Grandma really really needs to see me in church that day, and the kids pester me to hunt eggs with them although it’s 95 degrees outside.

Labor Day/Memorial Day/President’s Day: Day off work for no reason? Cool!

Halloween: The quantity of candy is excellent; the quality…uneven. I like Halloween because I have a good excuse to do some sort of arts and crafts (I always make the costumes). In our neighborhood, the block party is mandatory. We don’t want to go, but usually wind up having a good time anyway.

Christmas: There are no holidays that actually hold meaning for me, but Christmas comes the closest. Every year I stress about the money and the shopping and the obligations. No one’s ever in the mood and the most we all hope for is to get through it relatively unscathed. But I still feel the potential in Christmas. It’s cold out and the lights are pretty and the music is beautiful and we do our silly traditional things. For a little while, things seem kind of special. [Linus]And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.[/Linus] :slight_smile:

#16

Worst:

Christmas. Starts in September; endless pressure to buy presents for people who already have everything; horrible songs like Sleigh Ride or The Christmas Song repeated endlessly in crowded malls, seasonal depression because the days are at their shortest, everything being closed on Christmas day itself so that there is nothing to do and nowhere to go. Also hearing all that crapola about this horrible evil war on Christmas. The only good thing: watching your neighbor go 30 feet up the tree in his yard to string lights while drunk and taking bets on how long it will be before he falls out.

Thanksgiving. I like cranberry sauce, but that’s about it. The weather is usually dreary and on the rare occasions I get together with my family I don’t even know half the people there.

New Years Eve: People shooting off firecrackers and shouting “Happy New Year” all night long. Apparently they have to welcome the new year for all the time zones in the country.

Middling:

Valentines Day. I don’t have a valentine, but I do like some of the candy.

Memorial Day. I get a day off and it’s sort of the official beginning of summer.

Best:

Fourth of July! My forefathers fought and died so that we might have pot, booze, and illegal fireworks! Nothing like watching drunk and stoned people dodge wayward bottle rockets.

Halloween. You get to dress up in a silly outfit and bum candy off people. Loads of fun. Minor related holiday: Day of the Dead. Set up an alter with pictures of your favorite dead people and eat skull shaped cookies.

Couldn’t care less holidays:

Easter. At my age you don’t hunt Easter eggs and I’m not religious (unless something frightens me badly) so the church services mean nothing to me.

St Patrick’s Day. People mainly use that holiday as a reason to get drunk and I’m not supposed to drink so there isn’t much reason for me to celebrate.

#17

Hey Hey for Halloween!
When all those witches can be seen!
Wearing black and red and green
and banging on a tambourine!
Horse and haddock! Horse and go!
Horse and Pellattiss! Ho ho!
What’s a Pellattiss? Damned if I know!

Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! I can think of a dozen different reasons that it’s the very best holiday of all. Just for starters, Halloween celebrates fine things like masquerie, mystery, mortality, monstrosity, magic, madness, fear, fantasy, freedom, faery, rebellion, sorcery, chaos and candy. And its traditions focus on creativity and imagination and transgressive public performance.

My birthday, May second. The holiest and most joyous occasion to have ever graced an unworthy world.

Thanksgiving runs a distant third, but this is still a pretty good holiday, too. Why? Well, obviously – because it is all about having a huge elaborate feast centered around roasted meat (yes, fowl is *too *meat!) and a traditional dessert. Of course, I am not really fond of turkey (however, the best thing on the table is the stuffing that comes out of said gobble-bird) and there are two hundred finer desserts than pumpkin pie – but as a hedonistic heathen with gourmandisiac leanings, I think the basic idea is excellent, and one more people should take to heart.

April Fools Day is holy to me, if only for the memory of my near-godly triumph on the evening of of 04/01/2003

New Year’s Eve is when all the lamers who can’t handle their booze drink it anyway, and run around being soused idiots in public, but it’s still a sanctioned occasion to have a great rowdy loud drunken party, so I’m with it and for it.

Chinese New Years – cool parade with dragons and gongs and explosives.

I used to like Gay Freedom Day a Hell of a lot more than I do now – let’s just say I’m a jaded old queen and leave it at that, okay?

All those quotidian normal-people politics-based holidays are a lump of “meh” – Memo, Vets, Prez, Columbus, and Labor Days are mostly an annoyance to me, because I don’t participate much in the sentiments involved and the bank, library and post office being closed are a huge pain in the ass. St Paddy’s is more of the same, as far as I’m concerned – but with the added obnoxium of more of those amateur drunks, running around in broad daylight this time.

Easter is a drag because of all the Christian solemnity cum sanctimony cum sententiousness of the occasion on the one hand and the cutesy wootsey bunny wabbits and lambie pies and widdle chickies and duckies on the other, and both facets tend to give me hives just about equally. The only counterpoint to Easter suckitude is the Monday morning after, when there’s donkey loads worth of chocolate and marzipan yummies at all the drugstores and food markets at fabulously steep discounts.

Valentine’s Day makes me queasy, the way its lore and rituals take love and lust and genuine romance and heartfelt friendships and turn them into cheap-ass sappy sentimental corn-syrup mush, and all decorated in hideous taste, too. Plus I have some gruesome memories of how the day was observed back in grammar school.

Mother’s Day especially and Father’s Day are both sort of disgusting – they try to guilt trip and otherwise emotionally coerce one into sappy sentiment and familial affections some of us don’t share; in fact they’re symptoms of the odious, mawkish, imbecilic and repressive cultus of THE FAMILY which swamps the modern, Westernized psyche.

Fourth of July is horrific – the celebration of patriotism aka nationalism, the glorification of warfare and weaponry and the making those awful things into fun and games. Also all those goddamned firecrackers get on my nerves. Red white and blue is actually a fairly dumb and unsightly combination of colors, too, but you’re not supposed to notice that. Plus there’s that odious American preoccupation with Wholesomeness and Family Oh Family Together Time and The Kids all over the damn place again.

But of course the absolute freaking worst is Christmas. Oh my sweet badness, do I ever hate Christmas. And I have many excellent reasons for my disdain of the December wallowday, reasons which I ain’t about to get into here – because those who get it, get it and nothing need be said, while the rest of them don’t wanna hear it and get pissed off when you mention it.

#18

Easter is by far the best because I am religious and Easter Vigil is the best night of the year.

Christmas is right up there, and we get Christmas through New Year’s off from work so that’s one big happy-happy-joy-joy.

Patriotic days do nothing for me, and Father’s/Mother’s Day I’ve been instructed to ignore. Thanksgiving is too much about food.

#19

Thanksgiving - We tend not make a big deal out of this one–just a family dinner at home. But it’s nice and cozy and mellow and gives us time to catch up, and it’s a bit of quiet peaceful time in the middle of everything.

Labor Day - I never get this off at work and so I get cranky that I miss the parade down to the Ex. Bah.

Christmas - There’s presents and alcohol and family and embarrassing pictures and eggnog and caroling and lots of celebration, and then there’s the quiet moments where you sit by the fire and watch the tree lights twinkle. This is the best.

New Year’s Eve and New Years Day - I’ll drink a glass of champagne and watch the fireworks, but it’s not a huge deal.

Easter - The egg hunts and chocolate stuff are all pretty much done as far as our family goes, so we just end up having a tiny get-together (and maybe exchanging chocolate). It has more of a religious significance for me now than anything else, I think.

1st of July / Victoria Day (same basic principle as July 4th) - Fireworks are shiny! There’s sometimes a block party! That’s about it.

Halloween - I love handing out candy to the kids and my carved pumpkins are epic. Good times.

Valentine’s Day - My relationship with this one varies wildly from year to year. I’ll be kind and leave it out.

April Fool’s Day - I think I have to a) organize better pranks, b) hang out with more prankster people. Checking the websites and everything is fun, though.

St. Patrick’s Day - I don’t mind dressing in green or having a drink.
The only really big ones for me are Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hallowe’en, and Easter. Everything else I can take or leave.

#20

Bad Holidays. From dalej42

  1. Martin Luther King day. We don’t need a holiday for King. Nuff said.

Nuff said?

Really?

I’d be interested in why you don’t think we need a holiday for King.