When is Christmas?

Christmas Day in the United States is observed on December 25 every year. The date marks the traditional Christian feast commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, although Christmas in American public life is observed both as a religious holiday and as a broadly secular cultural celebration. Christmas Day has been a federal public holiday since 1870, when President Ulysses S. Grant signed legislation making it a holiday for federal employees in the District of Columbia, alongside New Year's Day, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving. Federal coverage was extended nationally in subsequent decades, and Christmas Day is now codified at 5 U.S.C. section 6103.

When December 25 falls on a Saturday, federal observance shifts to Friday, December 24; when it falls on a Sunday, observance shifts to Monday, December 26. Customary observances include attending church services (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican Christians traditionally attend midnight Mass on Christmas Eve or services on Christmas Day; some Eastern Orthodox communities follow the Julian calendar and observe Christmas on January 7), exchanging gifts, decorating Christmas trees with lights and ornaments, displaying nativity scenes (creches), hanging lights and wreaths, sending Christmas cards, baking and sharing seasonal foods, watching seasonal films, and family meals (often featuring roast turkey, ham, prime rib, or other festive entrees).

Many communities hold tree lighting ceremonies, the most famous being the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse south of the White House (lit annually since 1923) and the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in New York City (lit annually since 1933). The holiday's association with the figure of Santa Claus, a stout bearded man in a red suit who delivers gifts to children, was popularized by the 1823 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas (Twas the night before Christmas) by Clement Clarke Moore (or possibly Henry Livingston Jr.), and by Thomas Nast's nineteenth-century cartoons in Harper's Weekly.

Christmas is widely observed by non-Christian Americans as a cultural and family holiday, while practicing Christians observe it primarily as a religious feast. The Supreme Court has ruled that public display of nativity scenes by government bodies must be assessed under the Establishment Clause (Lynch v. Donnelly, 1984; Allegheny County v. ACLU, 1989), but private display and Christmas as a federal holiday have not been seriously challenged.