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VII · The World

How is Christmas celebrated in the United States?

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A snowy small-town street in the United States: a house with a wreath on the door and children sledding.
USA25 XII
A snowy small-town street, a wreath on the door and children sledding.

In the United States, the gift-bringer is Santa Claus, on Christmas Eve. Some American customs came from elsewhere, like the Christmas tree, which German families in Pennsylvania were putting up in the early 1800s; others began here, from an 1823 poem to “Jingle Bells” and NORAD’s watch for Santa.

At a glance

  • Christmas Day: a federal holiday
  • Gift-bringer: Santa Claus, on Christmas Eve
  • The tree: with German families in Pennsylvania by the early 1800s
  • The National Christmas Tree: first lit in 1923
  • New Mexico’s lights: farolitos and luminarias

Christmas words

Americans say Merry Christmas in English, and some American Christmas words come from other languages. In New Mexico: farolito, a little lantern, and luminaria, an illumination: New Mexico’s two names for its paper-bag Christmas lights.

Santa Claus

Christmas magic

In the United States, Santa Claus comes on Christmas Eve, with his sleigh and his reindeer, and in the morning the stockings are full.

The poem that begins “’Twas the night before Christmas” first appeared in a newspaper in Troy, New York, on December 23, 1823, with no name on it. It is usually credited to Clement Clarke Moore, who put it in a book of his poems in 1844.

One of the people who gave America its picture of Santa was Thomas Nast, a German-born artist at the magazine Harper’s Weekly. His “Santa Claus in Camp” was on the front page of the issue of January 3, 1863, and Nast kept drawing Santa into the 1880s. How Saint Nicholas became Santa Claus tells the whole story.

Tracking Santa began by accident in 1955, when a newspaper ad for Sears printed the wrong phone number and children’s calls reached the US air-defense command in Colorado. Its director of operations, Colonel Harry Shoup, played along: he had his radar team watch for Santa and tell the children where he was. NORAD, the command that took its place, has kept the tradition every Christmas Eve since.

The Christmas tree

German families in Pennsylvania were putting up Christmas trees in the early 1800s, but most of the country did not take up the custom until the 1850s and 1860s. A Boston gift book for children already pictured a tree glowing with candles in 1841. In 1850 the magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book printed a picture of Britain’s royal family around their tree, turned into an American family, and reprinted through the 1850s, it is thought to have helped persuade families across America to have a tree of their own.

On Christmas Eve 1923, President Calvin Coolidge switched on the lights of the first National Christmas Tree, on the Ellipse near the White House. It was a balsam fir about 48 feet tall, sent from Vermont, the President’s home state, by Middlebury College.

The famous tree at Rockefeller Center in New York began in 1931, before the buildings were finished: workers clearing the site during the Great Depression set up a tree, hung it with homemade garlands, and lined up beneath it to collect their pay. The first official tree lighting was in 1933, and it has been a New York tradition every year since.

Songs from near and far

“Jingle Bells” is American: it was first printed in Boston in 1857, under the title “The One Horse Open Sleigh,” by J. Pierpont. “Silent Night” came as a visitor: a family of singers from Tyrol, in the Austrian Alps, seems to have sung it in America for the first time on Christmas Day 1839.

New Mexico’s lights

In New Mexico, Christmas means rows of glowing paper bags, each weighted with sand and holding a small candle, lining plazas, churches, homes and paths. North of Santa Fe they are farolitos, “little lanterns”; farther south they are luminarias, “illuminations.” Long before paper bags, people lit little bonfires of piñon wood along the roads.

As church tradition tells it · New Mexican Catholic tradition

In New Mexican Catholic tradition, the lights were lit on Christmas Eve to guide the Holy Family on their way.

Native Pueblo communities keep their own Christmas lights: Acoma Pueblo lines its road with more than two thousand luminarias, and at Picuris Pueblo there is a torchlight procession and traditional dancing on Christmas Eve.

A federal holiday

Christmas Day is one of the federal holidays set by US law, and when it falls on a Saturday, federal offices close on the Friday before. An act of Congress on June 28, 1870, made Christmas Day a holiday for federal workers in Washington, DC, and by 1885 Congress had begun to extend the holidays to federal workers across the country.

Quick answers

Is Christmas a federal holiday in the United States?

Yes: Christmas Day is a federal holiday by law.

When did Americans start having Christmas trees?

German families in Pennsylvania had trees in the early 1800s; most of the country took up the custom in the 1850s and 1860s.

What are farolitos and luminarias?

Farolito, a little lantern, and luminaria, an illumination: New Mexico’s two names for its paper-bag Christmas lights.

Read on: how Saint Nicholas became Santa Claus, the Christmas tree, why we hang stockings, the whole poem of 1823, “Jingle Bells”, letters to Santa and milk and cookies for Santa.

Where our facts come from

  1. 5 U.S.C. § 6103, Legal Information Institute (Cornell Law School), Subsection (a), the last entry ("Christmas Day, December 25."); subsection (b)(1) (a holiday falling on a Saturday is observed on the Friday before)
  2. Congressional Research Service, "Federal Holidays: Evolution and Current Practices", R41990, Section "Creation of Federal Holidays", subsection "New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day" ("On June 28, 1870, the first federal holidays were established for federal employees in the District of Columbia"); section "Federal Holidays and Employee Pay" (1885: the five holidays applied to per diem employees "on duty at Washington, or elsewhere in the United States"; "apparently for the first time")
  3. Christine Graham Ward, "Christmas trees!", Past is Present (American Antiquarian Society blog), December 21, 2010, ¶ beginning "Christmas trees were somewhat common" (Pennsylvania German communities in the early 19th century; the rest of the country in the 1850s and 1860s); ¶ beginning "Like periodicals such as Godey's" (the 1841 Youth's Keepsake, Boston, a candle-lit tree, likely one of the earliest printed in the United States); ¶ under "The Christmas Tree from Godey's Lady's Book" (1850; the Queen's crown and Prince Albert's mustache left out; re-printed through the 1850s, believed to have given households the push)
  4. National Park Service, President's Park, "1923 National Christmas Tree", Section "President and Participants", paragraph 1 ("At 5:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, President Calvin Coolidge lit the first 'National Christmas Tree'"); the photo caption (lit on December 24, 1923, on the Ellipse); section "The Tree", paragraph 2 (a 48-foot balsam fir from Vermont, donated by Paul D. Moody, president of Middlebury College; the footnote on the height)
  5. Karen Hudes, "The Tree Through the Years", The Center Magazine, Rockefeller Center, November 18, 2015 (Internet Archive capture), Slide "1931" (during the excavation of the site, workers lined up beneath the tree to collect their paychecks in the Great Depression; garlands made from the tinfoil ends of blasting caps); the introduction (the 83rd annual tree lighting in 2015); slide "1942" (the tree unlit from 1942 until the end of the war)
  6. "Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas", Troy Sentinel, December 23, 1823 (Wikisource transcription with page scan); Clement C. Moore, Poems (New York: Bartlett & Welford, 1844, archive.org), Troy Sentinel, the editor's note and the poem (no author named); Poems, the title page and contents ("A visit from St. Nicholas … 124")
  7. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection records (collection API): Thomas Nast, "Santa Claus in Camp (from 'Harper's Weekly,' vol. 7, p. 1)", 29.88.4(7); "Santa Claus – Merry Christmas", originally published 1884, Record 429261: title (vol. 7, p. 1), objectDate ("January 3, 1863"), artistDisplayBio ("American (born Germany), Landau 1840–1902 Guayaquil"); record 852700, objectDate (1884)
  8. Government Book Talk, US Government Publishing Office: Ed Kessler, "The Beginning of a Great Holiday Tradition" (December 21, 2017), and Chelsea Milko, "The U.S. Government's Santa-Tracking Mission" (December 19, 2016), both posted by Trudy Hawkins, "The Beginning of a Great Holiday Tradition", paragraphs 1–4 (1955; a misprinted Sears newspaper ad; the calls reached the Colorado headquarters of the air-defense command; Col. Harry Shoup, CONAD's director of operations; NORAD, "CONAD's successor"); "The U.S. Government's Santa-Tracking Mission", paragraph 3 (radar operators "scanned monitors for indications of Santa on the move") and paragraph 7 (positioning updates through the Santa Tracking hotline); "The U.S. Government's Santa-Tracking Mission", paragraph 8 ("Want to track jolly St. Nick and his sleigh-pullers on Christmas Eve?"); "The Beginning of a Great Holiday Tradition", paragraph 3 (the children calling to "ask for goodies from Santa")
  9. Library of Congress catalog record, "The one horse open sleigh" (sm1857.620520), Fields: contributor "Pierpont, J."; "Boston : Oliver Ditson, 1857"; registered for copyright, 1820–1860 volumes
  10. Christopher Klein, "8 Things You Might Not Know About 'Jingle Bells'", History.com, December 16, 2016 (updated December 11, 2025), Item 3, "'Jingle Bells' wasn't the song's original name" (first printed by a Boston music publishing house in 1857 under the title "The One Horse Open Sleigh"; reissued two years later as "Jingle Bells")
  11. Silent Night Society, "Spreading of the Song", "The path into the 'New World'", paragraph 1 ("on Christmas Day, 1839, the Rainer Singers performed 'Silent Night!' – apparently for the first time on American soil")
  12. National Park Service, "Luminaria Traditions", Paragraph 1 (every December plazas, churches, homes and businesses across New Mexico lit with luminarias, or farolitos in northern New Mexico; luminaria means "illumination", farolito "little lantern"; brown paper bags partly filled with sand, with a lit tea candle or votive); paragraph 2 (north of Santa Fe the paper lantern is the farolito, south of Santa Fe the luminaria; before the square-bottomed paper bag, patented in 1872, small piñon bonfires along the roads); paragraph 3 ("may have originated in 1590"; in New Mexican Catholic tradition lit only on Christmas Eve to guide the Holy Family; Picuris Pueblo's torchlight procession and dances on Christmas Eve; Acoma Pueblo's road lined with over two thousand luminarias every year)
  13. SpanishDict (SpanishDictionary.com), Spanish–English dictionary, "farolito", Masculine noun, sense 1a ("small lantern")
  14. SpanishDict (SpanishDictionary.com), Spanish–English dictionary, "luminaria", Feminine noun, sense 1 (decoration), a ("light": "Los devotos encendieron cientos de luminarias en honor a su santa patrona")