Christmas Day 2026 in the United States

Yes. Christmas Day is one of the eleven legal public holidays set out in 5 U.S.C. § 6103. Federal offices close, federal employees receive the day off with pay, and every state observes it.

It is the only federal holiday with an explicitly religious origin. The Supreme Court has not disturbed its status, on the reasoning that the day has acquired a secular character in addition to its religious one.

Christmas Day is fixed to December 25, so it falls on a different weekday each year.

The federal observed-date rule applies because the date is fixed. Presidents have also, by executive order, occasionally granted federal employees Christmas Eve as an additional day off, but that is discretionary and not part of the statute.

December 26 is not a federal holiday in the United States. This is a common point of confusion for visitors from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries, where Boxing Day is a public holiday.

The one American exception is the Virgin Islands, where December 26 is observed as Christmas Second Day.

Christmas was among the first four days Congress designated for federal workers in the District of Columbia in 1870, together with New Year’s Day, Independence Day and Thanksgiving.

Adoption at state level ran from Alabama in 1836 to Oklahoma in 1907. Puritan New England had been actively hostile to the observance, and Boston banned it outright between 1659 and 1681.