Christmas has the fewest births among these four holidays
Christmas Day averaged 6,437.9 births in the U.S. SSA records from 2000 through 2014. That was lower than New Year's Day, Independence Day, and Veterans Day, the other three fixed-date holidays selected for this comparison.
We selected the four dates before calculating the results. Each falls on the same month and day every year. The comparison covers those four dates; a ranking of every U.S. holiday would need a broader analysis.
| Holiday | Calendar date | Recorded births | Births per occurrence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christmas Day | December 25 | 96,568 | 6,437.9 |
| New Year's Day | January 1 | 116,030 | 7,735.3 |
| Independence Day | July 4 | 132,229 | 8,815.3 |
| Veterans Day | November 11 | 168,687 | 11,245.8 |
All four totals cover 15 occurrences. They come from 62,187,024 recorded births across 5,479 days in FiveThirtyEight's SSA source file.
How do those dates compare with nearby days?
A holiday can fall on a Tuesday one year and a Sunday another. Because birth counts differ by weekday, comparing a holiday only with the day before or after mixes together two calendar patterns.
For each holiday occurrence, we used four nearby dates: 14 days before, 7 days before, 7 days after, and 14 days after. Each comparison date falls on the same weekday as the holiday.
Christmas and New Year's Day are exactly seven days apart, so this method includes one holiday among the other's comparison dates. For the table below, we excluded comparison dates that coincide with the annual federal holidays modeled for this period or their standard observed dates. The exclusions in these windows were Christmas, New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Thanksgiving.
The calendar uses the ten annual holidays in the 2014 edition of 5 U.S.C. 6103, with the standard Friday/Monday observance for fixed holidays falling on weekends. These calendar flags identify comparison dates; they do not describe hospital staffing.
| Holiday | Matched events | Holiday average | Comparison average | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christmas Day | 14 | 6,415.6 | 11,404.1 | 43.7% fewer |
| New Year's Day | 14 | 7,639.1 | 11,363.0 | 32.8% fewer |
| Independence Day | 15 | 8,815.3 | 12,070.6 | 27.0% fewer |
| Veterans Day | 15 | 11,245.8 | 11,083.6 | 1.5% more |
After those exclusions, Christmas had 43.7% fewer births than its nearby comparison average. New Year's Day was 32.8% lower and Independence Day was 27.0% lower.
Veterans Day's average was slightly higher: it had 1.5% more births than its nearby comparison dates.
How much does the comparison method matter?
Keeping all four comparison dates, including other holidays, puts Christmas 38.7% below its comparison average. Removing the other holidays changes that to 43.7%. New Year's Day moves from 24.3% to 32.8% below.
We also compared the holiday with just the same weekday one week away, just the same weekday two weeks away, and the immediately adjacent days. Christmas, New Year's Day, and Independence Day had fewer births under each of those comparisons. The size of the difference changed. Veterans Day's difference was small and changed direction in the adjacent-day comparison.
These comparisons describe the recorded birth counts. They do not measure how many births a holiday prevented or establish that the holiday caused the difference. The counts also cannot explain why someone gave birth on a particular day.
How we calculated the results
We used the SSA series alone, covering January 1, 2000 through December 31, 2014. That keeps one source throughout the comparison. The checker and main birthday rankings use the longer combined 1994 through 2014 baseline, so their totals differ.
For each event, we divided the sum of its eligible comparison-day births by the number of comparison days. We then averaged those event-specific comparison means across years. The percentage difference uses that comparison average as its denominator:
Percent fewer births = (1 − holiday average ÷ comparison average) × 100
Every event has equal weight in the two averages, even when some events have fewer eligible comparison dates. We calculate the ratio of those averages, rather than averaging yearly percentage differences.
The raw totals include all 15 years for each date. The nearby-date comparisons require a complete four-date window before exclusions. January 1, 2000 lacks the December 1999 comparison dates; December 25, 2014 lacks the January 2015 dates. We exclude those two events from all nearby-date comparisons. Christmas and New Year's Day therefore have 14 matched events each, while Independence Day and Veterans Day have 15.
We analyze the holiday's actual calendar date. We use observed holiday dates only to flag comparison days for exclusion. Regional, religious, and one-off observances are outside this analysis. Matching nearby weekdays also leaves other seasonal and annual differences in the data.
Sources and further reading
The source is FiveThirtyEight's preserved SSA daily birth data, available under CC BY 4.0 as described in its repository. Download the analysis data for counts, denominators, and comparison results. The methodology explains the source boundaries and the site's baseline.
These are historical U.S. records. They do not estimate current worldwide birth patterns, and the file has no delivery-method or individual scheduling information from which to establish a cause.
See where a date falls in the rarest-birthdays guide, or check your own birthday.