Days Until Christmas
Local only — nothing is uploaded unless you save or share it.
How many days until Christmas — counted in sleeps, not hours, and right across time zones.
- The answer is already there — days until Christmas, from today
- Change the date if you are counting to something else
- Copy it, or add the page to your home screen to check again tomorrow
Days until Christmas
Save this tool
Keep Days Until Christmas handy
Use your browser's Share menu, then “Add to Home Screen”.
About this tool
How many days until Christmas is one of those questions that gets asked in a car, by a child, in the middle of October — and answered badly by almost everything, because most countdowns divide one timestamp by another and report a duration. A duration is not what anybody means. At nine in the evening on the 24th the answer is one sleep, not 0.1 days, and it is still one sleep at seven in the morning. This counts whole calendar days between today and the 25th of December, which is how a person counts them. That also makes it correct across daylight saving, which the timestamp version is not: a real day is 23 or 25 hours long twice a year, and dividing by a fixed 24 puts the answer out by one for a few days around each change. No hours are involved here at all, so there are none to be off by. After Christmas has passed it counts to next year's automatically, because on Boxing Day "days until Christmas" plainly means the next one rather than minus one. And it counts to anything else you like. Change the date and it becomes a countdown to a birthday, a holiday, an exam, a wedding or a deadline — the same arithmetic, which is why there is no reason to make you find a second page for it.
Frequently asked questions
How many days until Christmas?
The number at the top of this page, counted from today to the 25th of December. It counts whole days rather than hours, so it changes once a day at midnight rather than ticking down — which is what somebody counting sleeps actually wants.
Does it count today?
Today is zero. If it is the 24th, the answer is one; on Christmas Day itself it says so rather than answering 365. The next day it starts counting to next year's, which is what the question means once the day has gone.
Is it right in my time zone?
Yes. It uses your device's own date, which is the date you would see on a calendar on your wall — no clock arithmetic is done at all, so there is nothing to be shifted by a time zone. Two people in different countries can genuinely see different answers on the same afternoon, and both are right where they are standing.
What about the clocks changing?
It is unaffected, and that is a real difference rather than a detail. Countdowns built by dividing milliseconds by 24 hours go wrong for a few days around each daylight-saving change, because a real day is sometimes 23 or 25 hours. This counts calendar days directly, so the clocks can do what they like.
Can I count to something other than Christmas?
Yes — change the date and it counts to whatever you pick: a birthday, a holiday, an exam, a due date, a deadline. It always counts to the next occurrence, so a date that has passed this year rolls to next year rather than going negative.
Does it work offline?
Once the page has loaded, yes — it uses your device's clock and nothing else, so no connection is needed and nothing is sent anywhere. Add it to your home screen and it will answer on a plane.
How many weeks until Christmas?
That is shown too, as whole weeks plus the days left over — 7 weeks and 3 days reads more usefully than 52 when you are planning around weekends.
Help improve this tool
Found a bug, want a change, or need a tool we don't have?
You have an unsent draft.
Thanks — that's with us. You'll find the reply in your inbox.Go to my messages