Christmas Countdown

DateMath counts to 12:00 AM on December 25 on your device's clock, so the countdown ends when Christmas Day starts where you are. Until then it subtracts the current time from that moment and shows the real time left in whole days, hours, minutes and seconds, so the hour the clocks go back in the fall is counted. On December 25 it wishes you a merry Christmas and starts counting to the next one.

• Your device's local time. DateMath's countdowns read the current time from your device and count to the target in your own time zone. In the US, the standard time zones are set by 15 U.S.C. 261 and daylight saving time by 15 U.S.C. 260a (from 2:00 AM on the second Sunday in March to 2:00 AM on the first Sunday in November); your device applies them. Source: 15 U.S.C. 261, 15 U.S.C. 260a.
• US federal holidays. DateMath skips the 11 annual holidays of 5 U.S.C. 6103 on the days they are observed for federal employees, as the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) lists them: a Saturday holiday on the Friday before, a Sunday holiday on the Monday after. Source: 5 U.S.C. 6103, OPM federal holidays.
• The Gregorian calendar. DateMath treats every date as a Gregorian date, with its leap-year rule: a year divisible by 4 is a leap year, except century years not divisible by 400, so 2000 had a February 29 and 2100 will not. Source: Gregorian calendar.

DateMath's date math is tested against more than 100 cases worked out by hand. Every worked example and table on the site is computed with the same code the calculators run, so a page and its calculator can't disagree.

The countdown above shows the days, hours, minutes and seconds until Christmas Day starts on your clock, at 12:00 AM on December 25. It ticks down live, like an Xmas clock countdown you can keep open in a tab, and you don't need an Xmas countdown app: this online Xmas countdown runs in any browser, on a phone, a laptop or a TV.

What the countdown shows

• The time left in days, hours, minutes and seconds, counted from the time on your device.
• The weekday Christmas falls on: Friday, December 25, 2026 in 2026.
• Calendar days to go, the countdown till Christmas you would count on a calendar, with the same span in weeks and days.
• Business days in between, the US workdays left before the holiday.

On Christmas Day the countdown wishes you a merry Christmas and starts on the next one, so a bookmark to this page works every year. To count down to a time of your own, such as the Christmas Eve dinner or a flight home, use the day countdown.

A Christmas countdown calendar opens one day at a time from December 1, as most Advent calendars do with their 24 doors. The calendar below gives each day of December 2026 with the days left until Christmas; the number is also the sleeps left, one per night.

For an Xmas calendar countdown that starts earlier, the table below gives the days and weeks to Christmas from the first of each month in the second half of the year:

Christmas is always December 25, but its weekday moves one day later each year, and two after a February 29. When it falls on a weekend, the US federal holiday moves for federal employees: a Saturday Christmas is observed on Friday, December 24, and a Sunday Christmas on Monday, December 26, under the rule the Office of Personnel Management applies to 5 U.S.C. 6103.

The days around Christmas in 2026, with the calendar days to each from November 1:

Business days before Christmas

From Sunday, November 1, 2026, 37 business days lie between then and Christmas Day, with weekends and the federal holidays in between left out: Veterans Day (November 11, 2026) and Thanksgiving Day (November 26, 2026). Christmas Eve is not one of the 11 annual federal holidays, though a president has given federal employees the day off by executive order in some years, and many employers close early. The business days calculator counts any other span.

The countdown reaches zero at midnight in your own time zone, so Christmas Day starts at a different moment in each place. Places on UTC+14, such as Kiritimati in Kiribati, are the first to reach December 25; London gets there 5 hours before New York, and Los Angeles 3 hours after New York. If family in another time zone opens this page, their countdown ends at their own midnight.

DateMath reads the time from your device, so the countdown is as accurate as your device's clock; phones and computers that set their time automatically from the network keep it within a second or so. For the countdown to the New Year that follows a week later, open the New Year countdown.