In our world, on our Earth, there are many different beliefs,cultures,religions,nationalities, and so on. With all of these groups, come many different holidays to be celebrated by the people affiliated with them. My goal by polling people about holidays was to discover the ratio/popularity of some specific holidays as to who celebrated them, why, etc.

A recent poll investigated around 100 responses from people of many different ages, nationalities and religions. The age of people that took the time to take my quick survey were mostly young ranging from around 12-19 to 20-29 years old. The reason being for these age groups ending up to be the most common most likely had to do with that my survey was posted online on social media. If you’re still wondering what any of that has to do with the reason of these age groups being the majority, it’s that people from these age groups are more likely to be online and using social media compared to a rare response from someone that was possibly 60 years of age or older.

Religion was actually more evenly distributed or in amounts closer to each other if you will. Approximately 27.5% of the survey respondents were Christian. Christian also had the highest percentage among all the other options for this survey. Only two other religions, Catholic and Atheist came close to Christian and ended up being equal to each other with a percentage of 23.8% each. Not to forget coming quite close was the ‘Other’ option with a percentage of 20%.

In perspective, religions such as Christian, Catholic and Atheist are some of the world’s leading religions. Due to the fact that religions such as these come to be in such a populous number, you can understand why they ended up being the majority of the choices respondents made when taking this survey. As for third place, the ‘Other’ option contained responses from people that had put down answers ranging from Jewish and Agnostic to Islamic and Buddhism, all of which we also recognize as other popular religions among the Earth’s population.

Now when you think of religions/nationalities, you think of not only their beliefs and practices but what holidays they can/can’t and do/don’t celebrate. With a whopping percentage of 43.8%, respondents said that they always celebrate holidays exclusive to their religion/nationality while 30% said sometimes and 26.3% said never. What this doesn’t go in depth to, is why so many people always celebrate holidays exclusive to them. This brings up the question of whether they always celebrate their respective holidays because they’re forced to, choose to, or so and so forth.

The ‘sometimes’ option although seems to be much clearer to me. Some religions are ‘looser’ than others and allow more freedom to those that practice it and it’s because of this that it’s easy to see as to why they sometimes celebrate their respective holidays because they have the gift of choice that other religions do not which allow them to celebrate their holidays if they choose to. Also supporting the claim, is that around 57% of survey takers said they sometimes celebrate holidays outside of their respective religion and/or nationality.

The majority of people responding to the survey answered that they celebrate Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and Valentine’s Day where all of which had a very high percentage. Christmas was at top with the highest percent among the other choices at 90%. Halloween, Easter, and Valentine’s Day were all very close to each other ranging from low-to-high 70s.

With Christmas and Easter both being related to religions like Christian and Catholic, it would seem that it’s not just the Christians and Catholics that celebrate such holidays. A holiday like Christmas as we’ve all come to know, is very popular. You can see people celebrating it almost anywhere you are here in the US. It’s popularized through the TV and movies we watch, social media, and even through music. Even though biblically it’s a Christian holiday, people all over can and have found themselves celebrating the holiday. It’s just to the degree of how it’s celebrated in relation to whether you’re celebrating it for the presents or for prayer is where you will find the main differences.

Just as people may celebrate different holidays, they also hear about different holidays that are celebrated. Nearly every respondent to the survey stated that Christmas was one of the holidays they hear the most about adding to the statement that Christmas is indeed one of the most popular holidays out there. Adding to what holidays the respondents also hear the most about include Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Years, and 4th of July.

Here in the US, these holidays are celebrated in nearly every state and around the times they are celebrated, you can see people all over preparing for the celebration of the holiday. For example, in October around Halloween there are numerous amounts of people that like to buy costumes, candy and decorate their homes in preparation for the celebration of Halloween just as for the 4th of July, people like to wear or bring out red, white, and blue, hang their american flags, and purchase fireworks for the holidays celebration. In the US there’s a large amount of variety when it comes to holidays.

You also cannot forget about the people out there that also celebrate the less popular holidays. There are even those that take the less popular holidays more seriously or in their eyes, they look forward to those holidays more than a national holiday. Women’s Equality Day is one example but in my point of view, this holiday should be more important because of how much women have progressed through the years and made themselves equals even though they should’ve always been seen that way.

Women’s Equality day received the second highest amount of votes totaling to around 24% when asked, “What holiday do you think should be made into a national holiday?” The ‘Other’ option came in first where a variety of answers came in like Remembrance day, Hug A Ginger day, Election day, and some who believe that we don’t need any more national holidays.

You can’t forget that just as some holidays more popular than others, there are also those that are less popular. 42%, almost half of the survey takers have Groundhog Day as their least favorite holiday and you can’t blame them where all you do is wait the potential appearance of a groundhog and its appearance will determine whether there are six more weeks of winter or not. The others that were put at least favorite came pretty close to each other which included Valentine’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day and some others.