Days Until Christmas

About the Christmas countdown

Christmas Day is 25 December every year. This page counts down to midnight at the start of 25 December in your own time zone, showing days, hours, minutes and seconds left, plus sleeps, weeks and working days.

Christmas Day falls on 25 December in the Gregorian calendar, so the countdown resets every year the moment the day begins. The timer on this page uses your device's local time zone, which means it reaches zero at midnight where you are rather than at one fixed moment for everyone. Advent calendars conventionally start on 1 December, which gives children a natural way to break the wait into daily steps.

Christmas dates for the next 5 years

What people use this countdown for

• Working out how many sleeps are left for children counting down to the day.
• Planning gift buying, shipping cut-offs and travel bookings against the real number of days remaining.
• Counting the working days left before the holiday break to pace year-end deadlines.
• Showing a live countdown on a classroom or office screen through December.

How the countdown works

1. The timer reads your device's clock and counts down to the start of the day (midnight, local time).
2. Days, hours, minutes and seconds update every second; sleeps, weeks and working days are worked out from the calendar.
3. When the day arrives the page switches to a message for Christmas and shows the countdown to the next one.

Tips

• Use the working-days figure rather than total days when planning deadlines, because weekends and the holiday itself are not delivery days.
• For posted gifts, check your carrier's last-order dates, which are normally set well before 25 December.

Frequently asked questions

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