21 Most Celebrated Holidays In America, Ranked By Popularity And Spending In 2026

America does not need one shared tradition to move in the same direction each year. The holiday calendar does that work through familiar rituals: Thanksgiving tables, Christmas lights, Halloween costumes, Fourth of July cookouts, and a Super Bowl broadcast that turns a Sunday night into a national gathering.

According to the national survey, 94% of Americans planned to celebrate Thanksgiving, with turkey still at the center of the table. Other recent holiday and retail data tells a similar story: the holidays that last are the ones people can repeat, recognize, and share.

In the list below, we will present the most celebrated holidays in America, ranked by popularity, participation, spending, and the traditions that keep them alive.

Most Celebrated Holidays in the US

Christmas – The Unshakable Centerpiece of the American Calendar

Nearly 36 percent of Americans name Christmas as their favorite holiday, which puts it far ahead of every other celebration on the calendar.

Christmas has become the one season when family plans, school breaks, church services, travel, shopping, food, movies, decorations, and year-end routines all gather around the same date.

More than 93 percent of Americans take part in some form of Christmas tradition, from church attendance to family gatherings, according to Gallup.

That number explains why Christmas still sits at the center of the American holiday year, even for many people who mark it in a cultural way rather than a strictly religious one.

When I was younger, Christmas felt less like a single day and more like a break in the year. Streets changed first, then stores, then homes, then schedules. By the time Dec. 25 arrived, daily life had already slowed down. That pause still explains much of the holiday’s power.

Every December, people make space for familiar rituals. Some decorate early, many travel long distances,  and a lot of people cook the same traditional meals,  attend services, and or simply use the day to enjoy with family after a long year.

According to the National Retail Federation, holiday season spending reached $994 billion in 2024, with gifts, travel, and food among the biggest expenses.

People return to Christmas because of the rituals: decorating, cooking, exchanging gifts, visiting relatives, watching the same films, and ending the year in company they know.

Other holidays may own a weekend, a meal, a parade, or a game, but Christmas still stretches over the final weeks of the year and shapes the way millions of Americans close it.

Thanksgiving – Gratitude and Familiar Faces

Thanksgiving follows close behind Christmas, with 23 percent of Americans naming it as their favorite holiday. Its place on the calendar is different from most major celebrations. There are no costumes, fireworks, countdowns, or long gift lists. For many households, the holiday comes down to a table, a meal, and the effort people make to be in the same room.

In my twenties, I spent one Thanksgiving with friends who stayed in town because flying home was too expensive. We cooked roast chicken instead of turkey, squeezed around a small table, and nobody cared that it looked nothing like the holiday scenes people imagine. It still felt like Thanksgiving because everyone had a place to sit.

That is why Thanksgiving holds its place so firmly. The menu matters, but only up to a point. The stronger part is the feeling that someone made room for you. It is one of the few American holidays that can still feel whole without expensive gifts, formal plans, or a perfect setting.

Spending and travel data help show the scale, but they do not explain the attachment on their own. Thanksgiving remains one of the most celebrated holidays in America because its promise is simple: people pause, gather, eat, talk, and return to a familiar idea of home, even when home looks different from one year to the next.

Halloween – America’s Most Profitable Secular Holiday

About 15 percent of Americans call Halloween their favorite holiday, according to Lifeway Research. That puts it behind Christmas and Thanksgiving, but ahead of many older civic and religious holidays in everyday excitement.

Halloween has a different kind of reach: children wait for costumes, teenagers plan parties, adults decorate houses, offices turn the day into a workplace event, and whole neighborhoods change for one evening.

The holiday is popular mainly because people can join at any level. Some families spend weeks building yard displays, while others only buy a bag of candy and turn on the porch light. Some people go all in with costumes, haunted houses, and themed parties. Others stay home and watch the street fill with children moving from door to door.

The business side keeps growing as well. Candy, costumes, decorations, party supplies, and pet outfits all turn October into one of the strongest seasonal periods for retailers.

In May 2026, Mars unveiled its Halloween 2026 lineup more than five months before Oct. 31, with more than 120 seasonal items and over 60 variety bags.

Halloween feels different because the rules loosen for a few hours. Children take over the sidewalk, neighbors wait by the door with candy, and adults join in without making much of a plan. A porch light, a cheap mask, a pumpkin on the steps, a horror movie after dinner. That is enough for the night to feel like an event.

That is why Halloween keeps ranking among the most celebrated holidays in America. It has no federal status and no single-family meal, but it gives communities something visible, creative, and easy to share. Few holidays turn ordinary streets into a public event as quickly as Halloween does.

Easter – Tradition, Continuity, and Renewal

Easter remains one of the most popular Christian holidays in the American calendar, with 13 percent of Americans naming it as their favorite. Its place is different from Christmas.

Easter usually starts with church plans, family lunch, candy in stores, eggs in the fridge, and someone asking where the baskets are. By Sunday, everyone already knows what the day is supposed to look like.

Every year, I celebrate Easter in a simple way. Eggs are dyed the day before, lunch is planned with family, and the morning starts without much rushing. Someone always brings too much food, children look for baskets or eggs, and the table ends up being the center of the day.

The religious meaning remains central for many households, but Easter also reaches people through family habits and seasonal routines. Some attend church early in the morning, some travel for lunch, some organize egg hunts in the yard, and some simply use the day to gather relatives who have not seen each other since Christmas or Thanksgiving.

The holiday can be deeply spiritual, lightly cultural, or both at once.

The scale has continued to grow. According to the National Retail Federation, Easter spending was expected to reach a record $24.9 billion in 2026, with average spending of $195.59 per person. Food, candy, gifts, flowers, clothing, and decorations all play a role, but the spending follows the tradition rather than replacing it.

That is why Easter still holds a steady place among the most celebrated holidays in America. It connects faith, family, childhood memory, and the first full feeling of spring in a way few other holidays can match.

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day – Personal Recognition in a Digital Era

Between 8 and 13 percent of Americans list Mother’s Day or Father’s Day as their favorite holiday. These celebrations are modest but deeply personal. $34 billion was spent on Mother’s Day gifts in 2024, a record high, while Father’s Day saw $22 billion in total spending.

For many families separated by distance, digital communication has replaced breakfast in bed, but the recognition remains intact.

New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day – America’s Two-Part Reset

About 12 percent of Americans rank New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day among their favorite holidays. The two days belong together, although they feel very different.

New Year’s Eve is about midnight: where people will be, who they will call, what they will watch, and whether they will stay out or go home early.

New Year’s Day is slower. People wake up, check messages, watch football, eat leftovers, and start thinking about what needs to change.

New Year’s Eve does not need much explanation because everyone knows the moment.

At midnight, people look at the clock, raise a glass, send a message, or sit on the couch half-awake.

In 2026, New Year’s Day also opened the year of America 250, which gave the holiday a larger national frame. For most people, though, the appeal stayed personal.

New Year’s remains one of the most celebrated holidays because it gives everyone the same simple feeling: one year ended, another one started, and there is still time to change something.

The Fourth of July – A National Symbol of Shared Identity

Independence Day ranks high among the most popular holidays at 12 percent, celebrated by nearly the entire U.S. population. In 2024, spending totaled $15.5 billion, including $9.4 billion on food and $2.2 billion on fireworks, according to the NRF.

I’ve attended many community events over the years, and the most striking thing is how predictable they are:  local parades, cookouts, fireworks, and no one seems tired of them.

The Fourth of July functions as a national identity exercise: a reminder that participation itself is the point.

Valentine’s Day – Enduring Through Commerce

Despite its commercial reputation, 8 percent of Americans call Valentine’s Day their favorite holiday. Spending topped $26 billion in 2025, and more than half of adults planned to take part. That number climbed again in 2026, when the National Retail Federation expected spending to reach a record $29.1 billion, with shoppers budgeting $199.78 on average.

A few years ago, while sorting old papers, I found a childhood Valentine card, a flimsy cartoon rectangle that said: “You’re cool.” It was probably handed out with twenty others in a classroom, but I still knew exactly what it was.

That is the part of the holiday people remember: a card, a message, flowers on the table, candy in a desk drawer, dinner after work, or one person making the day feel less ordinary.

The money gets most of the attention because Valentine’s Day is easy to count in flowers, jewelry, candy, cards, and restaurant bills. But the holiday is wider than couples alone.

Valentine’s Day stays popular because it gives people a clear excuse to say something they may leave unsaid the rest of the year. A gift can be expensive, but it does not have to be. For many people, the part that lasts is still the smallest one: a note, a call, a card, or a plan made with care.

Memorial Day and Labor Day – The Seasonal Bookends

Memorial Day and Labor Day sit on opposite ends of the American summer. Memorial Day carries the heavier meaning, with ceremonies, flags, cemetery visits, and military remembrance at the center of the holiday. Labor Day is different. It closes the season with one last long weekend before school schedules, fall routines, and work calendars take over again.

That is why both holidays rank among the most recognized dates in the country, even though they do not have the same emotional pull as Christmas or Thanksgiving. Memorial Day is about remembrance first, then travel and cookouts. Labor Day is about workers, rest, and the unofficial end of summer. Americans treat both weekends as markers on the year, not just days off.

On Memorial Day, the public side of the holiday still appears in parades, services, and visits to veterans’ cemeteries. At the same time, families use the weekend for road trips, backyard meals, beach days, and the first full break of warm weather. That tension has always been part of the holiday: honor in the morning, summer in the afternoon.

Labor Day has a more practical place in American life. It gives people a final pause before the year speeds up again. Retail sales, travel, school preparation, sports, and work schedules all gather around the same weekend. For many households, it feels less like a celebration and more like a deadline: enjoy the break now, because fall is about to begin.

Together, Memorial Day and Labor Day show how much Americans use holidays to organize the year. One opens the summer with remembrance, the other closes it with rest.

Both remain among the most celebrated holidays in America because they combine national meaning with the way people actually live: travel plans, family meals, time outside, and a short break from routine.

Civic and Emerging Holidays – The Expanding Layer

Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Juneteenth, and Indigenous Peoples Day do not rank as high as Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Halloween in favorite-holiday surveys.

They sit lower on the list, usually around 3 to 4 percent. But that number does not tell the whole story. These holidays carry a different kind of weight because they ask people to think about history, rights, freedom, and who gets remembered in public life.

MLK Jr. Day is the clearest example. For many Americans, it is not a holiday built around shopping or travel. It is tied to service, speeches, school programs, church events, and local volunteer work.

In 2026, The King Center marked MLK Day with a service project focused on turning remembrance into action, which is exactly why the holiday still feels different from a regular day off.

Juneteenth has grown quickly since becoming a federal holiday in 2021. It marks the end of slavery in the United States, but its modern role is also about public memory. Families gather, cities hold festivals and parades, schools and workplaces discuss the date, and more Americans now recognize why June 19 matters.

The National Juneteenth Foundation set the 2026 theme as “Juneteenth Brings Balance to America’s Celebration of Freedom,” which captures the larger point: Independence Day tells one part of the American freedom story, while Juneteenth forces the country to face another.

Indigenous Peoples Day belongs in the same conversation because it challenges the older calendar rather than simply adding another celebration to it. In many communities, the day is used to highlight Native history, culture, land, survival, and the long debate around Columbus Day.

That is why it draws attention even with a smaller favorite-holiday share. Its influence is not measured only by how many people host a gathering. It is also measured by what schools teach, what cities recognize, and which stories are allowed to stand in the center of the day.

These holidays show how the American calendar keeps changing. The biggest holidays still bring people together through meals, gifts, travel, and tradition. Civic holidays do something else. They slow the country down long enough to ask what freedom, service, equality, and memory mean now.

Super Bowl Sunday – The Modern Secular Feast

Although Super Bowl Sunday is not a federal holiday, it belongs in any serious ranking of the most celebrated holidays in America. About 6 percent of Americans name it as a favorite holiday, and the 2026 game showed why the day still has a rare hold on the country.

Super Bowl LX, played on Feb. 8, 2026, brought in 125.6 million viewers after Nielsen updated its final audience count. The NFL also reported that the audience reached 137.8 million viewers during the second quarter, the highest peak viewership ever recorded for U.S. television.

The game is only part of the day. People plan food, invite friends, watch commercials, comment on the halftime show, and talk about it at work the next morning. In 2026, the National Chicken Council projected that Americans would eat 1.48 billion chicken wings during Super Bowl LX, about 10 million more than the year before.

That is why Super Bowl Sunday feels different from a regular sports event. It pulls in people who care about football, people who care about food, people who only watch the ads, and people who show up because everyone else is watching. By Monday morning, the score, the commercials, the snacks, and the halftime show have already become part of the same national conversation.

St. Patrick’s Day – Irish Heritage and Parades

In 2026, the National Retail Federation reported that 60 percent of consumers planned to celebrate, with record average spending of $47.45 per person.

Boston remains one of the main centers of the holiday. AP reported large crowds in South Boston for one of the country’s biggest Irish heritage events.

Savannah also treats the day as a citywide tradition, with its official city site calling the parade one of the largest in America, behind New York City and Chicago.

When I was in Savannah for St. Patrick’s Day, the parade had already taken over the city by morning. People were saving spots on the sidewalks, bagpipes were playing in the distance, everyone had something green on, and the bars were full before lunch.

What These Holidays Reveal About America

The data show that Christmas and Thanksgiving are the most celebrated holidays in the United States. They consistently rank at the top of surveys on favorite holidays and most popular holidays, combining broad participation with strong emotional attachment.

Across all categories, Christian holidays, civic observances, and secular celebrations, the same principle applies: holidays that involve family and shared time rank higher than those defined only by spending.

Holidays as Emotional Anchors

According to YouGov and the National Retail Federation (NRF), Christmas remains the most popular holiday in the country, followed by Thanksgiving. About 93 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, and 88 percent observe Thanksgiving.

The average American spends around $902 during the December holiday period, while Thanksgiving averages $325 per household for food and travel, according to the ABC. These figures indicate that major Christian holidays continue to drive both participation and consumer activity in the United States.

Even among nonreligious respondents, these holidays are marked by high participation rates. I find this consistent with my own observation: when people talk about their favorite holiday, they usually mention Christmas or Thanksgiving first, regardless of their faith background.

The Rise of Secular Rituals

The next tier of the most celebrated holidays includes Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and Super Bowl Sunday. These are not religious observances but rank high in national participation. Halloween saw $12.2 billion in U.S. spending in 2024, the highest on record.

Over 110 million Americans watched the 2024 Super Bowl, consuming an estimated 1.25 billion chicken wings. Valentine’s Day spending surpassed $26 billion, with about half of adults participating.

These figures show that the most popular holidays are not limited to religious observance. Cultural events and entertainment-based gatherings now rival traditional holidays in scope and spending.

In my experience, this shift is visible in every community: people plan for the Super Bowl and Halloween as seriously as they plan for Easter.

Holidays About Freedom, Service, And History

Holidays that highlight civic reflection, such as Juneteenth, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Indigenous Peoples’ Day, have seen measurable growth in participation.

Awareness of Juneteenth reached 90 percent in 2024 (up from 74 percent in 2022). Volunteer engagement on MLK Day increased by 30 percent compared to 2019.

Younger adults (18 to 34 years) report greater attachment to these civic holidays. That matches what I notice personally, people under 35 are more likely to mention MLK Day or Juneteenth when asked what is the best holiday in terms of meaning, not leisure.

Spending vs. Sentiment

While retail numbers dominate coverage, the correlation between spending and celebration is not absolute. The average U.S. household spends roughly $1,500 per year across all holidays.

However, the most celebrated holidays remain those centered on family and community rather than high-value purchases.

From my analysis, consumer data confirm that money amplifies participation but doesn’t define affection. For instance, Memorial Day, with limited spending data, still ranks among the top ten favorite holidays due to its national character and seasonal timing.

Conclusion

The numbers show that the most celebrated holidays in the US are not popular for a single reason. Some are tied to faith, some to family, some to history, and some to food, travel, or a night everyone recognizes.

These dates divide the year into predictable emotional intervals: reflection, gratitude, renewal, indulgence, and rest. They are how a busy country keeps time.

Data from the National Retail Federation and YouGov confirm that holidays with consistent repetition, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July, create the deepest sense of belonging.

Even secular events like Halloween or the Super Bowl follow this pattern: the same foods, same social habits, same community rituals. People find meaning in reliability, not novelty.

From my own perspective, covering and living through these patterns for years, I’ve come to see holidays as a kind of civic infrastructure. They’re checkpoints that keep people grounded, regardless of politics or belief.

Every celebration, whether it’s fireworks, parades, a Sunday meal, or a few hours in front of the  TV, anchors one fact about the United States: despite constant motion, people still seek predictable moments of togetherness.