What Date Is Christmas?

Christmas Is a Fixed Date, Not a Fixed Weekday

Some holidays are defined by a rule like "the fourth Thursday of November", which means the calendar date itself shifts around every year. Christmas works the opposite way: the calendar date (December 25) is fixed, and the weekday is what moves. In 2026 it falls on a Friday. In 2027 it will fall on a Saturday. Both are correct, and both are still December 25.

That distinction matters for planning: a Christmas that falls on a weekend behaves very differently for most people, with fewer employers needing to give a separate weekday off, than a Christmas that falls in the middle of a work week.

Full Date Table (2016-2035)

Twenty years of Christmas Day dates side by side with Christmas Eve and the weekday each one falls on. Weekend years are marked, since a Christmas that lands on a Saturday or Sunday behaves differently for most workplaces than one in the middle of the week.

What Day of the Week Is Christmas This Year?

Check the table above for the exact weekday for any year in range. As a quick reference, Christmas Day cycles through the days of the week in a mostly predictable pattern shifted by one day each year, with an extra shift in leap years, which is why it takes roughly 6 to 11 years for a given weekday to repeat depending on where leap years fall in between.

Why Doesn't Christmas Move Like Easter or Thanksgiving?

Easter is a moveable feast tied to the lunar calendar (the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox), and Thanksgiving in the US is tied to a specific weekday (the fourth Thursday of November). Christmas was never defined that way. Historical evidence points to December 25 being fixed as a calendar date, not a weekday-based rule, from among the earliest written records of the holiday, a Roman almanac dated 336 CE. That fixed-date choice is also why Christmas has stayed on the same day of the year for nearly 1,700 years while several other holidays around it drift.

The Julian Calendar Exception

There is one genuine complication: which calendar is being used. Most of the world, and every date on the table above, uses the Gregorian calendar for civil dates. Several Orthodox Christian churches, including the Russian, Georgian, and Serbian Orthodox churches, still use the older Julian calendar for religious feast days. Their December 25 currently lands on January 7 measured on the Gregorian calendar, because the two calendars have drifted 13 days apart. It is still the same feast date on their own calendar, just not the same date on the calendar most of the world checks.

Curious about the reasoning and the history behind the December 25 date itself? Read the full history of Christmas, including the two leading theories historians point to.

Christmas Eve Dates Follow the Same Table

Christmas Eve is always the day directly before Christmas Day, December 24, so its weekday is one day earlier than whatever Christmas Day shows in the table above. In several countries, including Germany, Austria, and much of Scandinavia, Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day carries the bigger celebration, so knowing that weekday matters just as much for planning.

If you just want to know how much time is left until this year's Christmas Day, the homepage has a live countdown plus a one-click way to add the date to your own calendar, generated entirely in your browser with no account required (see the privacy policy for details).