Animal Crossing: New Horizons Christmas — Toy Day, Jingle, gifts, the perfect snowman, DIY recipes, and more

Our Animal Crossing islands look more festive during December. Trees are strung with colorful lights, villagers decorate their homes with festive decorations, snow blankets the ground, and players are visited by a special someone on Christmas Day. Looking forward to the fun holiday festivities? Here’s everything you need to know about Toy Day, Jingle the Black-Nosed Reindeer, Festive DIY recipes, gift-giving, and more in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

The majority of holiday fun takes place on December 24, or Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day. Here’s exactly what you need to do on your Animal Crossing island on both December 24 and December 25 for the Toy Day festivities.

Run errands for Jingle the Black-Nosed Reindeer

Jingle arrives on your island after 5 a.m. your local time on December 24 and stays until 5 a.m. December 25. He’ll set about giving you two tasks, crafting festive wrapping paper and then asking you to deliver presents to your villagers. Once you’ve done both things, you will be rewarded.

Step 1: Craft Festive Wrapping Paper

Talk to Jingle, and he’ll tell you that he forgot to wrap your villagers’ presents and will give you a recipe for DIY Festive Wrapping Paper before asking you to craft three of them. To craft all three items, you will need a total of 3 Blue Ornaments, 3 Yellow Ornaments, and 3 Red Ornaments.

• How to get Ornaments for DIY Recipes: From Mid-December through early January, if you shake one of the festive Christmas trees on your island, it might just drop an ornament. You’ll be able to use these ornaments to craft Toy Day decorations. It’s hard to get these things to drop, so you might have to shake your trees several times before one falls to the ground.
  • Reward: Once you have the three Festive Wrapping Paper pieces in hand, return to Jingle and give them to him. As a reward, he’ll give you a set of Toy Day stockings. Make sure to hang these in your house right away (more on that to come).

Step 2: Deliver toys to your villagers

Now Jingle will give you the Magic Bag, a.k.a. Santa’s toy sack, and will ask you to deliver gifts to your villagers. You must deliver all of the gifts before 5 a.m. your local time in the early morning hours of December 25 as both Jingle and the Magic Bag will disappear at that point. Run around and talk to your villagers. They can be anywhere on the island, including in their homes, in shops, or walking around outside.

• Dressing like Santa isn’t necessary: You don’t have to don the red hat the coat if you don’t want to, your villagers will know that the gifts are from Santa when they see the Magic Bag. But dressing up can be part of the fun.
• Your villagers aren’t picky: Unlike previous Animal Crossing games, you don’t need to choose which gift to give them; the Magic Bag makes it so you automagically pull the right gift for each of your neighbors.
  • Reward: Return to Jingle when you’re done delivering the presents, and he’ll give you the Toy Day Sleigh and a Gift Pile DIY recipe.

Exchange gifts with your villagers

In addition to giving out presents from Santa Claus on December 24, you can also exchange gifts with your villagers, if you’d like. To do this, simply purchase some wrapping paper from the green cabinet at Nook’s Cranny (or craft some) and wrap up something currently in your inventory; even a rock will do. Once the presents are wrapped, give them to your villagers.

You’ll recall that fun toys have been available to purchase every day at Nook’s Cranny. Now is the perfect time to wrap up any of those gifts you might have acquired before now and hand them out. Your villagers aren’t picky; they’ll like anything you give them.

All Toy Day gifts you can buy at Nook’s Cranny

From December 1 – 25, Nook’s Cranny sells fun toys, which you can purchase and then give to your favorite Animal Crossing characters on December 24. Make sure to check into Nook’s Cranny daily to see what new finds there are in-store. These toys come in different colors, but you’ll need to trade with friends to get all variations.

Remember how I mentioned before that you need to hang up the Toy Day Stockings somewhere in your house on Decemeber 24? That’s because if you go and check those stockings on December 25, you’ll find that there’s a special item waiting for you inside: Jingle’s Framed Photo.

When will snow be on my Animal Crossing island?

Unfortunately, snow won’t immediately blanket your trees and island starting the first day of December. You’ll need to wait about a week and a half later for that to happen. On December 10, the music on your island will change to include jingle bells, and snowflakes will fall in earnest, then your islands will be covered in snow on December 11. All you have to do is get on Animal Crossing the next day, and you’ll see plenty of snow. Plus, you can start collecting Snowflakes with your net, similarly to catching a falling Maple Leaf in Autumn.

• Northern Hemisphere: December 11 – February 24
• Southern Hemisphere: June 11 – August 24

Snowflake DIY Recipes

These are the recipes you can craft with your captured Snowflakes. They are all acquired by popping balloons, except for the Snowflake Wreath recipe, which Isabelle gives you.

Winter is complete without a snowman, or Snowboy, is it? While wandering around on your island, you might find two snowballs on the ground. Run up to one, and you’ll kick it, making it ever so slightly larger. Continue to kick it until it becomes large enough to roll around. Now continue to roll the snowball around and have it get larger. When it’s a decent size, do the same to the other snowball.

When the two snowballs are a good size, roll one onto the other to form a Snowboy. The first time you do this, the Snowboy will come to life and will give you both a Large Snowflake and a Snowboy DIY recipe. But from now on, you’ll have to make the perfect Snowboy if you want to earn prizes. You can only make one Snowboy a day, so you need to make them count.

How to make the perfect Snowboy

Step 1: Roll the first snowball until it’s as large as it can possibly get.

Step 2: Roll the second ball until it measures up to the bottom of your ear when you’re standing next to it. Use the camera app on your NookPhone to see just how tall the snowball is next to you.

Step 3: Push the second snowball on top of the large one.

Perfect Snowboy rewards & winter furniture

These are the rewards Snowboy will give you if you build the perfect Snowman.

You’ll need to shoot down balloons floating over your island throughout December to earn Festive DIY recipes. Curious to know what these look like? Check out the section below.

All Festive DIY recipes

There are 13 Festive DIY recipes to help you celebrate Toy Day. I’ve listed them in alphabetical order and included the materials needed to craft them.

Able Sisters also gets into the holiday spirit by providing festive clothing for you to purchase. Throughout December, keep an eye out to see what cute Christmas sweaters, dresses, or Santa Clause hats you can find. Once you have nice selection of clothing, you can take pictures and make some cute Animal Crossing Christmas Cards.

Jingle’s amiibo card

That’s right; there is a Jingle amiibo card. Just like the Jack amiibo card, when you scan it while visiting Harvey’s Island, you’ll be able to bring this reindeer into Photopia. Then you can decorate the area, make him emote a certain way and take fun holiday pictures. You can also invite him to have coffee with you at The Roost using this amiibo card.

If you also happen to have the Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise DLC, scanning this card will allow you to create the perfect vacation home for this happy reindeer.

Animal Crossing Christmas

Animal Crossing: New Horizons continues to prove just why it is one of the best Nintendo Switch games ever made. I’m really looking forward to seeing Jingle and picking out the perfect presents for my favorite villager, Sprinkle. Until then, we’ll just have to count down the days to Christmas.