Christmas Day is the least common birthday that occurs every year in these historical U.S. records. December 25 had 138,628 recorded births from 1994 through 2014, ranking #365 among 366 birthday dates. Rank #1 means most common; only February 29 has a lower total.
December 25 accounts for 0.162% of recorded births, or about 1 in 618. Those are historical sample odds, not a prediction for a baby born today.
December 25, beside other birthdays
Average recorded births each time a date occurred, 1994 through 2014.
- Commonness rank
- 365 / 366
- Share of recorded births
- 0.162 %
- Recorded births
- 138,628
Bars start at zero. Rank 1 means most common and uses total births across all 366 dates. The bars use births per actual occurrence; February 29 appeared five times, while the other dates appeared 21 times.
Check December 25 and compare with a friend →Is Christmas rarer than leap day?
It depends on what you count. February 29 has fewer total births because it occurs in only 5 of these years. December 25 occurs 21 times.
Across the whole sample, leap day has 52,561 births, below Christmas Day's total. But dividing by actual calendar appearances gives 10,512.2 births per leap day, compared with 6,601.3 per Christmas Day. On this second measure, Christmas is lower.
| Date | Recorded births | Commonness rank | Birth share |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 20 | 253,354 | 11 | 0.296% |
| December 24 | 170,166 | 363 | 0.199% |
| December 25 | 138,628 | 365 | 0.162% |
| December 26 | 201,577 | 360 | 0.235% |
| January 1 | 164,362 | 364 | 0.192% |
| February 29 | 52,561 | 366 | 0.061% |
A year without February 29 has no leap day; it is not a day with zero births. The U.S. Naval Observatory's leap-year rules explain when it appears. The rarest-birthday guide gives the fuller comparison between birth share and births per occurrence.
Is Christmas low only because of its weekday?
Christmas moves through the week. To avoid comparing a Christmas Sunday directly with an ordinary Tuesday, we use SSA records from 2000 through 2014 and match each December 25 to December 11 and December 18 in the same year. Both dates share its weekday.
We keep the comparison inside the calendar year. January 1 and January 8 of the following year are excluded. This prevents New Year's Day from becoming a comparison for Christmas and avoids borrowing observations across a year's boundary.
In this SSA window, Christmas averages 6,437.9 recorded births per occurrence. The comparison average is 11,656.2. Christmas is 44.8% below it, and lower in all 15 years.
| Year | Weekday | Recorded births | Nearby mean | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | Monday | 6,719 | 12,200.5 | -44.9% |
| 2001 | Tuesday | 6,603 | 13,227.5 | -50.1% |
| 2002 | Wednesday | 6,774 | 13,106 | -48.3% |
| 2003 | Thursday | 6,744 | 13,183.5 | -48.8% |
| 2004 | Saturday | 6,259 | 8,586.5 | -27.1% |
| 2005 | Sunday | 6,224 | 7,492.5 | -16.9% |
| 2006 | Monday | 6,409 | 13,200 | -51.4% |
| 2007 | Tuesday | 6,624 | 14,472.5 | -54.2% |
| 2008 | Thursday | 6,471 | 13,587.5 | -52.4% |
| 2009 | Friday | 6,160 | 12,656 | -51.3% |
| 2010 | Saturday | 6,159 | 8,306 | -25.8% |
| 2011 | Sunday | 5,728 | 6,854 | -16.4% |
| 2012 | Tuesday | 6,325 | 12,769.5 | -50.5% |
| 2013 | Wednesday | 6,620 | 12,772.5 | -48.2% |
| 2014 | Thursday | 6,749 | 12,429 | -45.7% |
Using December 18 alone gives a signed difference of -46.6%; using December 11 alone gives -42.8%. Both comparisons remain negative. Christmas has fewer births whichever of these two weeks is used.
Does that show why fewer babies are born on Christmas?
The comparison establishes a recorded difference, not its cause. The daily files have dates, weekdays and counts. They do not identify inductions, planned deliveries or an individual family's decisions.
The Christmas gap cannot tell us why a particular baby was born that day. The holiday birth study compares several holidays using a separate documented design; it also keeps observed gaps separate from explanations.
Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and December 26 have different totals. The December birthday guide places those dates in the whole month's ranking rather than treating Christmas week as one birthday.
Sources and what these odds cover
The count, rank and birth share use daily U.S. birth files compiled by FiveThirtyEight: CDC/NCHS for 1994 through 1999 and SSA for 2000 through 2014. Overlapping CDC years are excluded, and the two systems have different administrative coverage. Annual comparisons above use SSA alone.
Birth share divides Christmas births by all births in the baseline. It does not count how many living people have a Christmas birthday, and it does not establish worldwide odds. See the methodology for the source selection and ranking rules. The full rare-birthday ranking covers every date, and the birthday checker lets you compare Christmas with another birthday.
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