There are all sorts of holidays, for many different occasions. Holidays come with all sorts of celebrations. Feasts, gifts, parties, family, camaraderie.
And so very often, whatever the holiday, be it a real-world holiday or a Fictional Holiday, there is someone who is more than eager to celebrate, to the point where they might annoy/scare those around them with their enthusiasm.
It isn't just that the holiday aficionado likes or enjoys the holiday in question (real or fictional). They are absolutely overboard for the holiday.
They're the sort of person who would insist on the "ugly Christmas sweaters", or might carve an entire truckload of jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. They could be a Manchild who Still Believes in Santa, or will dress as Santa Claus, or someone who hides Easter eggs with zeal and aplomb, while also preparing deviled eggs for the Easter dinner.
Don't try to tell the holiday aficionado that they're Too Old to Trick-or-Treat. Don't suggest for a moment that they don't know the True Meaning of Christmas.
The holiday aficionado might not be stuck on just a single holiday, either. They might love every holiday and use any excuse they can to celebrate.
Frequently found in many a Christmas Episode, Halloween Episode, or any other holiday special.
Contrast Valentine's Day Vitriol, The Grinch, Birthday Hater, and Crappy Holidays.
Compare The Anti-Grinch for someone who loves Christmas but messes it up when trying to celebrate it. Also compare Life of the Party.
See also Hanukkah Episode, Halloween Episode, Thanksgiving Episode, Valentine's Day Episode, St. Patrick's Day Episode, and Easter Episode.
See also Christmas Every Day.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Urusei Yatsura: Setsubun is a huge deal for the alien oni of planet Oni-bushi, as well as their counterparts, the Lucky Gods, where every year they hold a contest to determine which is superior for the year. This is typically in the form of a basket toss. Ataru was made to participate once and ended up ruining the festivities for the oni, flirting with Benten of the Lucky Gods. As punishment, he's tied to a stake while the oni and the Lucky Gods throw things at him.
Comic Books
- Batman: Played for Drama with Julian Gregory Day, aka the Calendar Man. He looks forward to every holiday in the year...because his mental illness limits him to only breaking the law on those days, and his over-the-top "celebrations" usually end in a crime spree. While originally a goofy gimmick villain, later incarnations turned Calendar Man into a sadistic Serial Killer who's racked up a massive body count, and it's stated that there's an underlying fear across Gotham on every holiday because the citizens never know if he's going to strike.
Fan Works
- Duran and Kiyohime's Omake Theater:
- With Alyssa Searrs and the Searrs Foundation promoting western holidays in Tsukimori, Shizuru finds herself an absolute fan of Halloween, as it affords her an opportunity to dress her de-facto wife Natsuki in sexy costumes, show her off as her "Trophy Wife", then perv on her all night long. Though Shizuru is still mystified by the American custom of adding pumpkin spice to everything, especially when a local eatery offers sashimi with pumpkin spice wasabi.
- Christmas in Japan is typically seen as either a holiday for lovers or for children to wait for Santa. Duran and Kiyohime, being the "kids" in the relationship, love Christmas, to the point that Kiyohime actually orders seven squeaky toys in different pitches (one for each of her heads and one for Duran) so that they can play Christmas carols together with them.
Films — Animated
- Arthur Christmas: Arthur, one of Santa Claus's two sons, loves Christmas a lot. He wears a Christmas sweater and slippers all year round, replies to the children's Christmas letters, and knows "Silent Night" backwards.
- The Nightmare Before Christmas: Normally, the residents of each holiday town are, at least implicitly, focused on their own particular special day. Jack Skellington, the leading resident of Halloween Town, becomes an unusual case when a chance visit to Christmas Town leads to him becoming deeply enamored with the winter holiday, and he afterwards spends the bulk of the movie obsessively trying to study, analyze, copy, and eventually take over the new object of his obsession when he kidnaps Santa Claus to take his place.
- The Polar Express: During the song "When Christmas Comes to Town," "Hero Girl" refers to Christmas as the best time of the year and enthuses about spending time with family on it.
Literature
- Dilly The Dinosaur: "Dilly and the Book of Bad Behaviour" focuses on Dilly being even more of a Bratty Half-Pint than usual because he's too impatient for Christmas to arrive (starting from the middle of November). When his parents tell him not to get too squirmy or he'll be put in the "Book of Bad Behaviour" and thus not get any presents, this works too well and he becomes so worried about his impatience getting the better of him, that he bans his family from even mentioning the word "Christmas".
Live-Action TV
- Castle: Richard Castle is a bit of a Manchild and loves holidays in general.
- For Halloween, he throws "costume-mandatory" parties, carves jack-o-lanterns themed along classic horror films, and uses his daughter as a "candy beard" until she bows out for being Too Old to Trick-or-Treat.
- Castle also enjoys Thanksgiving, to the point that he lied to Beckett when they became a couple that his family dressed up as pilgrims and Indians for Thanksgiving.
- Castle also goes overboard for Christmas and is horribly upset when his whole family and Beckett tell him that they're making alternate plans that would have them skip their usual caroling, gift exchange, and family meal.
- In one episode, Castle wants to do an over-the-top Valentine's Day for Beckett and slips a set of very expensive earrings into what he thinks is Beckett's coat in the break room. Turns out it was Capt. Gates's coat, and Castle and Beckett are trying to keep their relationship secret at that point. Gates finds the earrings and Castle's note saying "Be My Valentine" and calls him into her office saying she won't have any more of his childishness and she is her husband's Valentine. Gates was aware of the relationship the whole time, but acted like she didn't know to afford herself Plausible Deniability.
- Doctor Who: The Doctor loves Christmas, no matter which incarnation.
- "The Doctor Dances": After the Doctor saves the day and Everybody Lives, Rose says to him "Look at you, beaming away like you're Father Christmas!" The Doctor replies, "Who says I'm not? Red bicycle when you were twelve."
- In "A Christmas Carol," the Doctor frames a chance to redeem Kazran Sardick very consciously around the Charles Dickens classic to perform Yet Another Christmas Carol.
- "The Doctor, The Widow, and The Wardrobe" has the Doctor repay a favor to a recently widowed woman because she helped him after he fell to Earth. He creates a doorway for her children to experience a Christmas holiday on a planet with a beautiful winter forest, and before all is done, he's changed time to save her husband's life.
- Leverage: Parker absolutely loves Christmas. It's first alluded to in "The Miracle Job" when she keeps confusing St. Nicholas and his statue for "Santa Claus" and admonishing the others not to hurt Santa. In "The Ho Ho Ho Job," she berates Eliot for not having Christmas cheer while disguised as Santa and decks out a Christmas tree in millions of dollars worth of stolen gems and jewels while saying "Happy birthday, Baby Jesus."
- The Librarians and the Christmas Thief: Ezekiel's family are all thieves who celebrate and are absolute devotees of "Thankstaking", which Stone explains to Cassandra is a dark reflection of Christmas, about greed and selfishness, where thieves gift each other with stolen goods. Small wonder for the dichotomy, as the holiday is held in honor of the Patron St. of Thieves, who just happens to be Santa Claus's Evil Twin.
- Modern Family: Claire's favorite holiday is Halloween. She goes all out with scary decorations and costumes, to the point where she goes overboard one year, making children cry and giving one grown adult a heart attack. This results in their neighborhood starting a petition to get Claire to get rid of all the scary decorations the following year and be more "family friendly".
Alex: We can't even carve a pumpkin?
Claire: The petition was very specific.
- Only Murders in the Building: Season 4 introduces Rudy Thurber, a suspect known at first as "Christmas All the Time Guy" — a man from the West Tower of the Arconia whose apartment is always decorated for Christmas and who is always dressed in holiday-themed clothing. It's later subverted when he admits he actually hates Christmas, but he once made a Christmas-themed video that went viral, so he keeps up his act as a Christmas-themed fitness influencer so he won't lose his audience.
- Roswell: Isabel loves Christmas, as it's one of the few times she can actually feel like a regular human being. Unfortunately, she's so single-mindedly obsessed with having what she calls "a normal Christmas" that she insists every aspect of the celebrations must conform to her arbitrary standard of "normal," throwing a fit if, say, the tree isn't of precisely average height (because that's totally normal, right?) and generally spoiling things for everyone else. Her friends and family call her "the Christmas Nazi".
- The witches in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, unsurprisingly, love Halloween and go all out to celebrate it, with lavish parties and even Halloween carols.
Video Games
- Flight Rising: While most of the NPCs in charge of holiday shops are shown to be rather passionate about the holiday they celebrate, Joxar is especially so. He's in charge of Joxar's Spare Inventory and Festive Favors, which are shops that open during the game's week-long elemental festivals. According to the developers, Joxar loves the festivals so much that he spends almost all of his time preparing for the next one.
- Papa Louie Arcade: Most of the customers in the Gamerias have a favourite holiday out of the holiday events in the games.
- There is the Fireworks Festival in Persona 5 on July 18, which is adored by all the Phantom Thieves, but especially by Ann, who won't talk about anything else before it.
- In The Sims 4, holidays were introduced with the Seasons expansion pack, including fictional equivalents of Valentine's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. Provided that your Sim has certain personality traits (such as the romantic trait for Valentine's Day) they'll be obsessed about this particular holiday, to the point were they will be depressed and irritable for days if you don't perform enough holiday traditions on that day.
Web Animation
- Mokey's Show: Mokey loves Christmas and always goes ballistic whenever the day arrives. Most characters don't mind except for Momi, who happens to be on the receiving end of all of Mokey's Christmas freak-outs.
- Spooky Month, at least early on, would have Skid and Pump spend all of October (and sometimes earlier in the year) waxing energetic about various Halloween activities. Both of them are rarely seen out of their monster costumes. At the end of the first short, Skid's mother shows herself to be of the Christmas season-obsessed variety, as she sets up her Christmas decorations the exact second October is over.
Webcomics
- League of Super Redundant Heroes: Good Girl is obsessed with Christmas, to the point where her teammates dread the holiday. She literally explodes with Christmas cheer when the day is approaching, decorating their house in a flash while singing Christmas carols. Unlike a lot of things she does, this doesn't seem to be something caused by her halo, since Bad Good Girl is equally enthusiastic about the season.
Web Videos
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Christmas is Goku's favorite holiday by a very wide margin, to the point that King Kai was able to use the claim that Lord Slug was attempting to ruin Christmas as a Motivational Lie to help him win (it was actually July).
- It's a Running Gag in The Nostalgia Critic to play up the titular character's love for Christmas during December, to the point where in the video covering Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer he had to be subjected to the Christmas equivalent of a nicotine patch to keep him calm. Toward the end of the video, the patch is removed to "let him have a little fun". It ends very badly, with the Critic going completely insane over his love of Christmas.
Western Animation
- Amphibia: Mrs. Boonchuy goes big for Christmas. In “Froggy Little Xmas” we learn that her dream is for the Boonchuy’s restaurant to be chosen for the annual Christmas parade.
- Bob's Burgers: The titular Bob Belcher is this with Thanksgiving, as a restaurateur. He treats it as Serious Business, having zero tolerance for any interruption or intrusion. It's his favorite holiday, and almost every Thanksgiving Episode has something go amiss. While he's willing to tolerate his family pretending to be Mr. Fischoeder's family for free rent, he gets upset when they pretty much neglect him entirely, treat him like crapnote, and overstep boundaries (Fischoeder insists on kissing Linda despite both Bob and Linda herself not wanting him to). He forgets to get fresh cranberries and expresses disapproval of his kids wanting to get canned cranberry sauce instead, with an implied threat to Tina. He manages to buy an expensive heritage turkey and, after the gas for their block is shut down, becomes determined to find a way to cook it fresh rather than freeze it and wait for the gas to come back. Louise calls him "Thanks-zilla" and notes that he's not fun to be around on the holiday.
- Doc McStuffins:
- Lambie sees Valentine's Day as her special day, partly because she's a Cuddle Bug, and partly because she was given to Doc as a Platonic Valentine (she's a sentient sheep plush). This causes trouble in "My Huggy Valentine," when she meets Val, a living Valentine heart toy, who loves Valentine's Day just as much, making Lambie jealous.
- Another one for Lambie is the Fictional Holiday "International Cuddle Day", which she's very enthusiastic about due to her love of hugging everyone.
- The Loud House: As the family comedian, Luan is naturally a big fan of April Fools Day. Unfortunately, her passion for the holiday leads her to become an absolutely ruthless prankster.
- Mickey Mouse (2013): Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy are this in “Duck the Halls”, gleefully explaining to Donald the joys of Christmas and having a comprehensive list of every activity, gift, snack, and tradition needed to have the best Christmas ever. Donald in turn becomes this after choosing to celebrate Christmas with his friends over migrating with the other ducks, though the cold weather ends up making him take it much farther than the other three.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- Pinkie Pie, Ponyville's resident party planner, loves a party, especially a holiday party. She absolutely loves Hearth's Warming Eve and is one of the most ardent celebrants of Nightmare Night.
- "Winter Wrap Up" (both the episode title and a pony holiday with no real-world equivalent besides the vernal equinox) is a time when ponies clear away the last remnants of winter to usher in spring. Twilight loves it, as it gives her a chance to flex her organizational muscle.
- In A Rugrats Chanukah, it's shown that Stu is extremely passionate — to occasional extremes, such as creating a 20-foot-tall mechanical menorah decoration — in helping his wife and her family celebrate Chanukah. Even though he's not Jewish himself, he wants his son to grow up proud of his heritage so his excitement is partially for Tommy's sake.
- The Simpsons: One episode shows Homer celebrating Father's Day as though it were a very special holiday like Christmas.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob himself loves every single holiday and frequently goes all out when it comes to celebrating: he gives everyone from friends to complete strangers elaborate gifts for Valentine's Day, schemes to create the perfect costume for Halloween, and names April Fools' Day as his personal favorite holiday, playing lighthearted pranks on the entirety of Bikini Bottom. Christmas is originally an exception, as Sandy was the first person to ever tell him about it, but once he's learned the traditions, he dives into Yuletide cheer with the same energy as the other holidays.
- Star Wars Rebels: Maketh Tua, Minister of Lothal, was someone who genuinely believed the Empire was benevolent and was a huge supporter of the anniversary of its founding, Empire Day. She is horribly incensed that the crew of the Ghost ruined the festivities of Empire Day, instead of focusing on the fact that they just destroyed the latest TIE-Fighter prototype.