Christmas in the U.S.: Federal Holiday Rules, What's Open and Where the Traditions Come From

When is Christmas, and who gets the day off

The next Christmas is on Friday, December 25, 2026. December 25 is one of the 11 federal holidays set by law (5 U.S.C. § 6103), so federal offices, the Postal Service and most banks are closed.

Private employers don't have to give the day off. Federal law also doesn't require extra pay for working on a holiday: holiday pay depends on company policy or a union contract.

When December 25 falls on a Saturday, federal employees get Friday, December 24 off; when it falls on a Sunday, the holiday moves to Monday, December 26. That's what happens in 2027: Christmas is on a Saturday, so the federal holiday is observed on Friday, December 24.

Christmas Eve: a day off only sometimes

December 24 isn't a federal holiday. Presidents can still give federal employees the day off by executive order, and several recent ones have: Christmas Eve was a day off in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2024, and in 2025 federal workers got both December 24 and December 26.

These orders usually come out only a week or two before Christmas, so it's worth checking each year.

Why December 25

The Bible doesn't give a date for the birth of Jesus. The oldest surviving record that places it on December 25 is the Chronograph of 354, a Roman calendar with the entry natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae ("Christ born in Bethlehem of Judea").

A popular theory says the date was picked to replace pagan festivals such as Sol Invictus. Historians call that too simple: early Christian writers never mention those festivals when they discuss the date. Another explanation is a calculation: an old tradition placed Jesus' conception on March 25, and nine months later is December 25.

From banned to federal holiday

Christmas wasn't always welcome in America. In 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony made celebrating it an offense punishable by a five-shilling fine; the Puritans saw the feast as unbiblical and rowdy. The ban was repealed in 1681.

Almost two centuries later, on June 28, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the law that made December 25 a holiday for federal employees in Washington, D.C., along with New Year's Day and the Fourth of July. Later laws extended it to federal workers across the country.

How Santa got his look

The American Santa grew out of St. Nicholas, a 4th-century bishop of Myra known for secret gift-giving, by way of Dutch and German traditions brought by immigrants.

The poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (1823), attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, gave him the sleigh, the eight reindeer and the trip down the chimney. Cartoonist Thomas Nast then drew him for Harper's Weekly from January 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, and over the next two decades turned him into the round, white-bearded figure Americans know today.