As we know, every year before Christmas, we are able to collect some hats. Although it's interesting to get various hats, my question is what's the point? Are they gonna turn to reputations or some badges in new year?
Cause as far as I know, they will just hide after few days and you won't hear about them even next year till you start collecting some new hats which you don't know where will they go!
Is there any sensitive answer?
During the Christmas the participation and therefor traffic to all sites drops significantly. To counter this decline a bit the event is organized. And you only attend events if they are fun.
Besides this it is also a way to field test possible new badges. To achieve certain hats, you have to perform specific positive actions. If those hats gets awarded a lot and/or helped in reaching the overall goal of Stack Exchange, the hat gets promoted to a badge. The Explainer, Refiner and Illuminator badges and The Red Baron Hat are examples of that
So Winterbash is:
