Christmas is America’s No. 1 favorite holiday—85% of us celebrate it. Here’s how Christmas started and why we have the traditions we do.
So, what is Christmas all about, why do we celebrate Christmas and why is it celebrated in December? Before you start thinking of Christmas decoration ideas, here’s everything you need to know about America’s most popular holiday.
What is Christmas?
Christmas is an annual sacred Christian holiday that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, the spiritual leader and founder of Christianity. While many people celebrate Christmas to honor Jesus’s birth, it’s also celebrated as a cultural holiday across the globe.
When is Christmas?
Christmas is always celebrated in America on the 25th of December, but the day of the week rotates. Here are the days of the week Christmas falls on for the next five years:
• Sunday, Dec. 25, 2022
• Monday, Dec. 25, 2023
• Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2024
• Thursday, Dec. 25, 2025
• Friday, Dec. 25, 2026
Why is Christmas on Dec. 25?
So, why is Christmas on Dec. 25 each year? Many people think it’s because that was the day Jesus was born, but that’s actually false. The Bible doesn’t say when he was born, and the few clues we have—like shepherds guarding their flocks outside—hint that it may have been in the spring.
It wasn’t until three-and-a-half centuries after Christ’s birth that the date Dec. 25 was chosen to celebrate his birthday. Pope Julius I picked the date in 350 AD, and it was formalized in 529 AD, when Roman Emperor Justinian declared Christmas to be a civic holiday. (There is some controversy surrounding this timeline, and research into early Christian history is ongoing.)
The date wasn’t a random pick. Many historians believe that both the Pope and the Emperor liked this date because it coincided with the pagan festivals celebrating the winter solstice, which dated back centuries. (The winter solstice occurs Dec. 21 or 22, depending on the year.) Combining Christmas with these ancient celebrations allowed the church to keep the winter holiday tradition while refocusing the party on the “new” religion of Christianity; many of the pagan rituals were ditched in the process.
Choosing a date near the shortest day of the year may have also been symbolic, according to another theory. Each day afterward, the sun would grow progressively brighter, much like how the Christ child developed from infant to immortal.
Why is it called Christmas?
A big step in rebranding the old holiday was to give it a new, religious name. In fact, the word Christmas comes from Cristes maesse, Old English for “Christ’s Mass,” which references the Catholic tradition of holding a special mass ceremony to celebrate Jesus.
How did Christmas start?
Today, Christmas is both a religious and cultural holiday, centered around the birth of Jesus and celebrated all over the world. Midwinter celebrations, usually surrounding the winter solstice, were a staple of many different cultures. After Jesus died, early Christian celebrations focused mainly on his crucifixion and resurrection, so Easter was the original big Christian holiday.
However, about three centuries later, when the Christian church had become much larger and more influential, religious and political leaders wanted a way to make the Christian holidays more popular while still allowing for the traditional celebrations people already enjoyed. Combining Christmas and the winter solstice—even if it meant giving Jesus an arbitrary birth date, as mentioned above—was the solution.
As Christianity spread across the globe, so did the Christian holidays, including Christmas. From there, it became celebrated in a wide variety of ways as different cultures adapted it to their specific needs.