Toy Day is a festive celebration occurring on Christmas Eve throughout the Animal Crossing series; only Wild World lacks the event. Although initially untitled, the event has been called Toy Day since New Leaf.
It features Jingle, the “black-nosed reindeer” in one of two basic roles. In the earlier games, your job is to find Jingle around town repeatedly to acquire exclusive Jingle furniture. In later games, Jingle asks you to deliver presents to each of your villagers.
Even though I’ll be ranking my favorite versions of the event from best to worst, I should mention that I love the atmosphere in all four games. The snow, the music, and the festive lights on trees combine to make it a memorable session that almost feels magical. If this event doesn’t get you into the Christmas spirit, then nothing will. 🎄
1. City Folk
Much like the GameCube event, City Folk requires you to find Jingle repeatedly to obtain Jingle furniture. But here, the event is greatly improved over its original incarnation. You have to trick Jingle by wearing a different hat each time. But fortunately, each of your patterns (worn as a hat) can be used to trick Jingle repeatedly.
Jingle isn’t as stingy in this game as he is on GameCube, plus there’s the novelty of being able to go inside animals’ houses when they’re not home!
It can still be a time-consuming event, but it’s possible to rack up a lot of bells. More than any of the other games, in fact. It’s also a lot of fun, and it’s my favorite Christmas Eve event in the series.
Video of Christmas Eve in City Folk
2. New Leaf
New Leaf introduced a completely different objective for the event: Jingle gives you a sack of gifts to deliver to your villagers, and you have to dress up as Santa and give the correct gift to each animal. So how do you know who gets what? You have to speak to your villagers in the weeks before Toy Day and take notes of their hints.
So this event does require more preparation than the others, and you’ll probably want to buy a Santa suit ahead of time, too. But if you’ve been a studious note-taker, Toy Day itself is quick and satisfying. In fact, it’s the fastest Toy Day on this list. So you can get a taste of the festivities, make your villagers happy, and then carry on with your holiday.
But if you didn’t prepare for the event, then you’re really out of luck. Your villagers are going to be disappointed in you, and so will Jingle.
3. New Horizons
The New Horizons event is a gift-delivering event, much like the one in New Leaf. But there are extra tasks required here: You have to craft special wrapping paper, which requires ornaments that are shaken down from festive trees.
While the crafting may be tedious (especially if you don’t have ornaments stockpiled already), the gift-giving is easier than New Leaf. You don’t have to keep track of their wish lists ahead of time, and you don’t need to be wearing a Santa suit. So the deliveries are pretty easy.
But there is an additional component to the event that is optional: Once you’ve given all of your villagers their gifts from Santa, they want gifts from you too. So if you’re a completionist, or just feel obligated to help your villagers, this additional gift exchange really turns the event into something quite long and tedious.
You can give them whatever gifts you want, but they must be wrapped or they won’t accept them. And tracking down all of your villagers for a second time (essentially making 20 deliveries in a row) probably isn’t the way you want to spend your limited, valuable time on Christmas Eve.
Video of Toy Day in New Horizons
4. GameCube
The original Christmas Eve event is also my least favorite. While it still has a festive feeling with the snow and Christmas lights, it’s also quite a pain. You have to track down Jingle repeatedly (as in City Folk), but here you must fool him by changing into a different shirt each time. (And you can’t keep using different patterns like you can in City Folk.) So if you didn’t stockpile a bunch of clothes, you’re not going to get very far.
But the worst part is that you have find Jingle five times before he’ll even give you the first item! Considering GameCube towns are among the biggest in the series, this is no small task. He can’t hide indoors in this game, but that’s not much of a consolation. I’m generally tired of the event by the time I get the first few items.
Another thing I hate about this event is that Jingle eventually cuts you off, even if you have more clothing to change into. So you can’t complete the set in a single year! It’s a lot of work for just a partial set of furniture. While I may occasionally check this event out just for the atmosphere, this is not a version I spend much time in any more.
Video of Christmas Eve on GameCube
When is a Toy Day not a Toy Day?
Note: The GameCube version of Animal Crossing also has a separate event called Toy Day, on December 23rd. However, there’s not much to it: Tortimer will give you a gift (a miniature car for boys, or a dolly for girls), and that’s it. Since this is not the full Christmas Eve event featuring Jingle, I did not include it in the rankings above.
What’s your favorite Christmas Eve/Toy Day event in the series? Leave a comment below! And Happy Holidays! 🦌❄️🎅🎁
Nice ranking Jeff! Here’s how I would rank each Toy Day event in the Animal Crossing series:
4. Gamecube
3. City Folk
2. New Horizons
1. New Leaf
Btw you should consider making this ranking for some of the other holidays the games mostly share like New Years! I’d love to hear your thoughts about that event!
Thanks! Good idea, but the problem is that I can’t play all of the New Year’s events in one year like I can with other holidays. Unless I miss the countdown in most of them, but that’s the most important part.
You Can play the New Year’s event in all 5 games, you just need to have all 5 consoles laid out in front of you and watch each countdown simultaneously!
Even if I played New Horizons in portable mode, I would still need three TVs in the same room (and I could only record footage from one of those systems).
Come to think of it, my City Folk and Wild World towns are on the same system (my Wii U), so I couldn’t play both of them simultaneously anyway.
Is the Wild world event the same as the City folk event?
No, Wild World doesn’t have a Toy Day/Christmas Eve event, unfortunately.