BoomClock/Holidays/Christmas

How Many Days Until Christmas?

What day of the week is Christmas?

Christmas Day is fixed to December 25, so unlike Easter or Thanksgiving the date never moves. What moves is the weekday, and it moves in a pattern most people never notice.

Christmas advances one weekday each year, because 365 days is 52 weeks plus one day. After a leap year it jumps two, because the extra February day pushes everything along. That is the whole rule, and it is why Christmas can feel like it "skips" a day some years.

Want the weekday for a Christmas outside this range, or for any other date entirely? Our day-of-the-week calculator handles any date from 1900 onward.

Why is Christmas on December 25?

Not because the Bible says so. No gospel gives a date for the nativity, and none gives a season. The shepherds "keeping watch over their flocks by night" have been used to argue for a spring or autumn birth, but that is inference, not testimony.

The earliest solid evidence for December 25 being celebrated as Christ's birth is a Roman document called the Chronography of 354, whose martyr register appears to go back to a list compiled in 336 AD. That makes 336 the latest possible date for the celebration, not necessarily the first.

Scholars generally offer two explanations, and it is worth knowing that they disagree.

• The calculation hypothesis. Early Christians held that Jesus was conceived and died on the same calendar day. Around 200 AD, Tertullian calculated the crucifixion to March 25 in the Roman calendar. March 25 became the Feast of the Annunciation, the conception. Nine months after March 25 is December 25. On this account the date is arithmetic, not appropriation.
• The Sol Invictus hypothesis. In 274 AD the emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of the unconquered sun, and the argument goes that the church absorbed an existing midwinter festival.

Here is the part the internet usually gets wrong. The confident line that "Christmas is just Saturnalia with better marketing" is much shakier than it sounds. There is no clear evidence that a festival of Sol Invictus was held on December 25 before Christians were already marking the date, and the appropriation theory itself was only advanced in the modern era rather than handed down from antiquity. It might be right. It is not established fact, and anyone telling you it is settled has skipped the argument.

Why is Orthodox Christmas on January 7?

Because of a calendar, not a disagreement about the date. Churches that still follow the old Julian calendar also celebrate Christmas on December 25 - it is simply that Julian December 25 currently lands on January 7 in the Gregorian calendar the rest of the world uses.

The Julian year is slightly too long, so it has drifted against the solar year. The gap is presently 13 days, and it is not permanent: it widens to 14 days in 2100. So Orthodox Christmas will eventually move to January 8, without anyone deciding anything.

Frequently asked questions

How many days until Christmas?

The live counter at the top of this page has the exact figure.

What day of the week is Christmas this year?

See the table above.

Does the date of Christmas ever change?

No. December 25 is fixed. Only the weekday changes, advancing one day per year and two after a leap year.

Is Christmas mentioned in the Bible?

The nativity is. The date is not. No gospel specifies December 25, or any other day.

Why is Boxing Day the day after?

December 26 is a public holiday across the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and much of the Commonwealth. The name most likely comes from the tradition of giving boxed gifts or alms to servants and tradespeople the day after Christmas. It is not observed in the United States.

Related countdowns