According to a new YouGov tracking poll on America's most famous events, Thanksgiving has surpassed Christmas as the nation’s favorite holiday.
While nearly all Americans (97 percent) have heard of Thanksgiving and Christmas, more of them seem to prefer celebrating Thanksgiving to Christmas. As reported by Lifeway Research, about 81 percent of Americans favor Thanksgiving while 77 percent prefer Christmas.
Conversely, 5 percent of Americans said they dislike Thanksgiving and 11 percent find themselves neutral to it. The number was slightly higher for Christmas, with 6 percent of Americans saying they are not fans of Christmas and 13 percent saying they have neutral feelings for the holiday.
The same can be said for older Americans regarding both holidays, with 88 percent saying they like Thanksgiving and 82 percent saying they like Christmas. The percentage is slightly lower for Gen Xers, with 82 percent loving Thanksgiving and 77 percent enjoying Christmas. The poll also found that Millennials are the least likely to favor Thanksgiving (74 percent) and Christmas (72 percent), though the percentage gap between the holidays was the smallest among the generations.
Men and women are nearly on the same level when it comes to enjoying Thanksgiving and Christmas. Roughly 82 percent of men reported being fans of Thanksgiving and 72 percent reported liking Christmas. Meanwhile, 81 percent of women said they enjoy Thanksgiving and 78 percent said they like Christmas.
As a whole, America’s most popular holidays are Thanksgiving (81 percent), Christmas (77 percent), Memorial Day (76 percent), Mother’s Day (75 percent), Veteran’s Day (74 percent), Martin Luther King Jr. Day (71 percent), Labor Day (70 percent), Father’s Day (70 percent), New Year’s Eve (66 percent), and Halloween (65 percent).
Other holidays with religious roots that were featured in the poll include Easter (65 percent), Saint Patrick’s Day (59 percent), Valentine’s Day (54 percent), Hanukkah (51 percent), Ramadan (29 percent) and Eid al-Adha (15 percent).
When broken down by generation, Millennials said they favor Martin Luther King Jr. Day (76 percent) over Thanksgiving (74 percent), Christmas (72 percent), Mother’s Day (72 percent) and Halloween (69 percent).
For Gen Xers, Thanksgiving (82 percent) was the top holiday, followed by Veterans Day (79 percent), Christmas (77 percent), Memorial Day (74 percent) and Mother’s Day (73 percent).
The poll also shows that Baby Boomers were the generation that most enjoyed Thanksgiving (88 percent), followed by Veterans Day (86 percent), Memorial Day (85 percent), Christmas (82 percent) and Mother’s Day (80 percent).
Photo courtesy: GettyImages/AlexRaths
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
