Christmas Day

Christmas Day is December 25, the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus and a US federal holiday since 1870. Many Americans also celebrate it as a cultural and family holiday. Christmas 2026 falls on a Friday. Christmas 2027 falls on a Saturday, so the federal holiday is observed on Friday, December 24, 2027.

Its American history includes a colonial ban, a slow spread through state law and a set of customs that largely took shape in the nineteenth century.

Christmas History in America

Why December 25?

The Gospels do not give a date for the birth of Jesus. By 336 A.D., Christians in Rome were celebrating it on December 25, and the date spread through the Western church. Christianity arrived in the American colonies with many denominations, and they did not agree on whether Christmas should be celebrated at all.

The Puritan Ban, 1659-1681

The strongest objection came from New England’s Puritans. In 1659, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony made observing Christmas an offense, with a fine of five shillings for each violation. The colony repealed the law in 1681 under pressure from the English government in London.

Repeal did not make the holiday popular there. Puritan opposition continued for decades, and Massachusetts did not make Christmas a state holiday until 1856.

Christmas Becomes a Legal Holiday

Several industrial states declared Christmas a legal holiday in the mid-nineteenth century. In Massachusetts, the push came largely from commercial interests rather than churches, and its law moved the holiday to Monday when December 25 fell on a Sunday, an early version of the observed-date rule used today.

The federal step came on June 28, 1870, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill making Christmas, New Year’s Day, July 4 and Thanksgiving holidays for federal employees in Washington, D.C. According to congressional records cited by TIME, the bill was prompted by local “bankers and business men” who wanted the days formalized. The holiday was unpaid at first. Federal workers elsewhere gained holiday benefits later, and a rule guaranteeing pay on those days did not exist until 1938.

Christmas is a federal holiday, not a national one in the legal sense. Congress and the president can give federal employees the day off, but neither can declare a holiday that binds every state; each state sets its own holidays.

How Christmas Customs Took Shape

Much of what Americans picture as a traditional Christmas was assembled in the 1800s:

• Santa Claus. The poem “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known by its first line, “’Twas the night before Christmas,” appeared anonymously in the Troy Sentinel in Troy, New York, on December 23, 1823. Clement Clarke Moore later claimed it, though some scholars credit Henry Livingston Jr. Thomas Nast’s drawings for Harper’s Weekly later gave Santa much of his familiar look.
• Christmas trees. The decorated tree spread in the United States as a Victorian English custom, popularized in part by Godey’s Lady’s Book.
• Cards and publishing. Christmas cards spread in the same century. Historian Penne L. Restad, quoted by TIME, argues that Northern publishers did much to promote the holiday’s customs, which helped make a once-contested feast a shared family holiday.

Public trees followed in the twentieth century. President Calvin Coolidge pushed the button to light the first National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse, south of the White House, at 5 p.m. on December 24, 1923. The tree was a gift from Middlebury College in Vermont, his home state. In New York, construction workers building Rockefeller Center pooled their money in 1931 for a 20-foot balsam fir decorated with garlands their families made. The center’s first official tree lighting followed two years later, in 1933. The trees have grown since: the 2022 tree was an 82-foot Norway spruce trucked in from Queensbury, New York, and topped with a 900-pound star covered in 3 million crystals.

How the Christmas Date Is Set

Christmas is fixed on December 25, so its weekday changes every year. Because it is a federal holiday, the federal weekend rule decides the day off:

If December 25 falls on	Federal holiday is observed	Recent and upcoming examples
Saturday	Friday, December 24	2021, 2027, 2032
Sunday	Monday, December 26	2022, 2033
Monday through Friday	December 25 itself	2026 (Friday)

The Saturday case has a side effect: in those years, Christmas Eve becomes the federal holiday, and the New York Stock Exchange closes that Friday instead of holding a shortened Christmas Eve session like the one scheduled for December 24, 2026. See the Christmas Eve page for how presidents have also closed federal offices on December 24 by executive order.

Extra Days Off Around Christmas

Presidents sometimes add a day by executive order, closing federal agencies while allowing agency heads to keep essential offices open. Donald Trump closed agencies on Monday, December 24, 2018, and Tuesday, December 24, 2019. Joe Biden did the same for Tuesday, December 24, 2024. In an order dated December 18, 2025, Trump closed agencies on both Wednesday, December 24, and Friday, December 26, 2025, turning Christmas week into a five-day break for many federal workers. Each order covers only the dates it names, so a day added one year does not carry over to the next.

A few more date patterns are useful:

• Christmas always falls on the same weekday as the following New Year’s Day, since January 1 is exactly seven days after December 25.
• December 25 is day 359 of a common year and day 360 of a leap year. The day of the year calculator works for any date.
• Christmas moves forward one weekday from one year to the next, or two weekdays when a February 29 falls in between. That is why the 2026 calendar shows a Friday Christmas and the 2027 calendar a Saturday one.

How Americans Celebrate Christmas

For Christians, the religious center of the holiday is church: services on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, nativity scenes and carols. For many households, the day revolves around opening gifts, a family meal and time off work. Most businesses, government offices and schools close, and the New York Stock Exchange lists Christmas Day as a market holiday.

The holiday also has a long public season. Tree lightings, holiday markets, concerts, light displays and charity drives fill the weeks between Thanksgiving and December 25.

Regional and Cultural Variations

Christmas looks different across American communities:

• Orthodox Christians. Churches that keep the Julian calendar for feasts, including the Russian, Serbian and Georgian Orthodox churches, celebrate Christmas on their December 25, which now falls on January 7 on the Gregorian calendar. The history of the Gregorian calendar explains how the two calendars drifted apart.
• Latino traditions. Many Mexican American and Cuban American families hold their main celebration on the night of December 24, with Las Posadas processions or a Nochebuena feast.
• Overlapping holidays. In some years Hanukkah overlaps Christmas, and Kwanzaa begins every year on December 26.

Christmas Facts Worth Knowing

• The first federal holiday law was a business measure. The 1870 act was pushed by Washington bankers and businessmen and passed with no notable debate in committee.
• The National Christmas Tree started on Christmas Eve. Coolidge’s 1923 lighting took place on December 24, not on Christmas Day.
• Extra days off depend on the president. Executive orders have closed federal agencies on December 24 in several recent years, and on both December 24 and December 26 in 2025.
• A ban that lasted 22 years. Massachusetts Bay outlawed Christmas observance from 1659 until the 1681 repeal.