How the Holidays bracket works
Rank holidays without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Christmas or Halloween? Thanksgiving or New Year's Eve/Day? — and after 15 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. Comparing two options is far easier than sorting 16 of them at once, which is why the finished list tends to survive a second look.
This bracket runs 4 rounds at the default 16-slot size (Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 16 options in the field. The field is reshuffled on every play, so the same option can meet a different opponent in round one and finish somewhere else entirely. You can also play it at 8 slots for a shorter or longer run.
15 picks, 4 rounds
- Round of 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 1-2 minutes start to finish.
All 16 entrants
All 16 entrants are listed below, including Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve/Day.
Christmas
December 25
Halloween
October 31
Thanksgiving
4th Thursday in November
New Year's Eve/Day
December 31 / January 1
4th of July
July 4
Valentine's Day
February 14
Easter
Spring
Mother's Day
2nd Sunday in May
Father's Day
3rd Sunday in June
St. Patrick's Day
March 17
Memorial Day
Last Monday in May
Labor Day
1st Monday in September
Cinco de Mayo
May 5
Mardi Gras
Before Lent
Groundhog Day
February 2
Black Friday
Day after Thanksgiving
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 16 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 2 completed Holidays brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
New Year's Eve/Day
7W - 1L · won 1 bracket
88%
win rate
- 2
Halloween
6W - 1L · won 1 bracket
86%
win rate
- 3
Easter
4W - 2L
67%
win rate
- 4
Christmas
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 5
Thanksgiving
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 6
St. Patrick's Day
3W - 2L
60%
win rate
- 7
4th of July
2W - 2L
50%
win rate
- 8
Mardi Gras
2W - 2L
50%
win rate
- 9
Valentine's Day
0W - 2L
0%
win rate
- 10
Mother's Day
0W - 2L
0%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Trust the first instinct. Overthinking a matchup usually produces a ranking you do not agree with later.
- 2The default run puts all 16 options in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 8 slots — a quicker run over a random 8 of them.
- 3Undo exists for a reason: an early-round mistake propagates all the way to the final, and there is no shame in taking it back.
Holidays bracket FAQ
How many options are in the Holidays bracket?
The pool holds 16 options. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 15 picks across 4 rounds: Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16 slots.
Which options are included?
Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve/Day, 4th of July, Valentine's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Memorial Day and Labor Day, plus 4 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank holidays take?
About 1-2 minutes — 15 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. There is no sign-up and nothing is stored until you reach the final.
Is this a holidays tier list or a ranking?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other option grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 15 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two options that never met. If you would rather place the options into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 16 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Is there a community holidays ranking?
Every completed bracket feeds the Holidays community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 16 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
Can I change which options are included?
Use the bracket maker: add your own options, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 16 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.