Last week, we bid farewell to Winter Bash and packed our Greatest Hats back into their boxes. It’s always a little sad to see the hats get put away for the year, but I always like to soothe my sorrows by reminiscing. (It’s only been a week and I’m nostalgic already.)

These hat shots came from the MSE community. Check them all out here!

The very first hat to be earned was Foot of the Rainbow, earned by Eran on Stack Overflow mere minutes after the event began. The first secret hat (spoiler alert) was awarded almost immediately thereafter: Ooh, Shiny! went to Olaf, also on Stack Overflow. A whoppi …

Another year has ended, and with that, it’s time to put all the hats back in their boxes. Winter Bash 2016 has come to an end! Over past three weeks, we’ve had ups and downs (err bugs) with hats, but overall, it was a massive success. It appeared that there was fun to be had, and, wow, the hats looked hat-tastic on everyone.

We saw many creative ways to wear hats, but here are a few of our favorites:

This year, 215,960 users earned a total of 797,074 hats! The most awarded hat was our version of a participation trophy, Just Here for the Hat. This hat was awarded to all Winter Bash us …