How Many Days Until Christmas 2026?

When is Christmas?

Christmas Day is always December 25. Because the date is fixed, its weekday moves forward by one day each year, or by two after a February 29. Christmas 2026 falls on Friday, December 25, 2026.

Christmas is a federal holiday in the United States. When December 25 lands on a Saturday, federal employees get the Friday before off; when it lands on a Sunday, the holiday is observed on Monday, December 26. Many private employers and schools follow the same pattern, which is why the "day off" in the table below is not always December 25 itself.

Christmas dates for the next eight years

Where Christmas comes from

Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, although the Bible does not give a date for it. The oldest surviving record of a Nativity feast on December 25 is a Roman calendar compiled in 354 that lists it for the year 336. Historians still debate why that date was chosen; explanations include the winter solstice, existing Roman festivals at the end of December, and early Christian calculations from the date of the Annunciation.

Many of today's American customs are relatively recent. The decorated evergreen tree came from Germany and spread through Britain and the U.S. in the 1800s. The poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas," first published in 1823, and Thomas Nast's drawings in Harper's Weekly from the 1860s on shaped the modern image of Santa Claus, who traces back to the Dutch Sinterklaas and the fourth-century bishop Saint Nicholas. Congress made Christmas a federal holiday in 1870.

How Christmas is celebrated

In the U.S. Christmas is both a religious and a cultural holiday: church services on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, family dinners, gift exchanges, trees and outdoor lights, and stockings filled overnight. Traditions differ elsewhere. Much of Europe marks the four weeks of Advent with calendars and outdoor Christmas markets, many Latin American families hold their main celebration on Christmas Eve (Nochebuena), and the UK, Canada and Australia add Boxing Day on December 26. Most Orthodox churches that keep the Julian calendar celebrate on January 7.

Planning with the countdown

• Shipping: USPS, UPS and FedEx publish holiday shipping deadlines every fall. Ground-service cutoffs usually fall in mid-December, and anything later means paying for express delivery. International and military mail has earlier cutoffs, so check the current dates once the countdown drops below about 60 days.
• Travel: the stretch from Christmas to New Year's is one of the busiest travel periods of the year. Booking flights and rental cars early gives you the most choice, and leaving a day earlier than everyone else can mean emptier roads.
• Budget: divide your gift budget by the weeks left on the countdown to see how much to set aside each week. Our budget calculator helps fit that into your monthly plan.
• Return windows: many stores extend return periods for holiday purchases, but not all do. Keep receipts and check policies before buying early.

Frequently asked questions

Last updated: October 8, 2026