December 2026 Calendar With Holidays: Hanukkah, the Solstice, Christmas and Every Deadline, Days Until Each

December 2026 begins on Tuesday, Dec. 1, and its one federal holiday, Christmas Day, falls on Friday, Dec. 25, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Hanukkah starts at sundown on Friday, Dec. 4, the winter solstice arrives on Monday, Dec. 21, and the month closes with New Year’s Eve on a Thursday. It is also a month of deadlines: Medicare open enrollment ends Dec. 7, federal funding runs out after Dec. 11, and the Postal Service’s last recommended Christmas shipping dates fall between Dec. 9 and Dec. 19. The countdowns below are counted from Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026.

December 2026 calendar at a glance

December 2026 starts on a Tuesday and ends on a Thursday, so it takes five rows on a Sunday-start calendar. The federal holiday is in bold.

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
		1	2	3	4 · Hanukkah begins at sundown	5
6	7 · Medicare deadline	8	9	10	11 · Funding deadline	12 · Hanukkah ends
13 · Geminids peak	14	15 · HealthCare.gov deadline	16	17	18	19
20	21 · Winter solstice	22	23 · Cold Moon	24 · Christmas Eve	25 · Christmas Day	26
27	28	29	30	31 · New Year’s Eve

For plain monthly layouts without these dates, the December 2026 printable calendar has several designs, including Monday start.

December 2026 important dates

Date	Day	What happens	Days from Oct. 24
Dec. 4	Friday	Hanukkah begins at sundown	41
Dec. 7	Monday	Medicare open enrollment ends; National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day	44
Dec. 9	Wednesday	USPS: send international First-Class Package and Priority Mail	46
Dec. 11	Friday	Last night of Hanukkah candles; federal funding expires at the end of the day	48
Dec. 13	Sunday	Geminid meteor shower peaks overnight into Dec. 14	50
Dec. 15	Tuesday	HealthCare.gov deadline for coverage starting Jan. 1	52
Dec. 17	Thursday	USPS: send Ground Advantage and First-Class Mail	54
Dec. 18	Friday	USPS: send Priority Mail	55
Dec. 19	Saturday	USPS: send Priority Mail Express	56
Dec. 21	Monday	Winter solstice, 3:50 p.m. EST	58
Dec. 23	Wednesday	Cold Moon, full at 8:28 p.m. EST	60
Dec. 24	Thursday	Christmas Eve; NYSE closes at 1 p.m. ET	61
Dec. 25	Friday	Christmas Day (federal holiday)	62
Dec. 31	Thursday	New Year’s Eve	68

To count from another day, add the days left in the current month to the days in each month before your date. From Oct. 24 there are 7 days left in October and 30 in November, so Dec. 4 is 7 + 30 + 4 = 41 days away.

Hanukkah, Dec. 4 to 12

Hanukkah 2026 runs from sundown on Friday, Dec. 4 to nightfall on Saturday, Dec. 12, on 25 Kislev to 2 Tevet in the Hebrew calendar. The first and last candle-lighting nights both fall on a Friday, so the menorah is lit before the Shabbat candles on those evenings. Our Hanukkah 2026 calendar has the nightly schedule and four printables.

The sky: Geminids, the solstice and a supermoon

The Geminid meteor shower peaks the night of Dec. 13-14 with the Moon only about 21% lit, a good year to watch. The winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, comes on Monday, Dec. 21, at 3:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST), the U.S. Naval Observatory says. Two days later, on Wednesday, Dec. 23, the Cold Moon is full at 8:28 p.m. EST; it is the closest full moon of 2026, a supermoon. Our supermoon and solstice guide has viewing times.

Deadlines that land in December

• Dec. 7, Medicare: open enrollment, which began Oct. 15, ends on Monday; changes take effect Jan. 1, 2027. Details are in our Medicare open enrollment story.
• Dec. 11, federal funding: agencies are funded through Friday, Dec. 11, under the stopgap law signed Sept. 2. Our report on the December funding deadline explains what lapses if Congress does not act.
• Dec. 15, HealthCare.gov: pick a Marketplace plan by Tuesday for coverage that starts Jan. 1. Open enrollment continues to Jan. 15, with coverage from Feb. 1; see our Affordable Care Act (ACA) open enrollment guide.
• Dec. 9 to 19, holiday mail: the Postal Service recommends Ground Advantage and First-Class Mail by Dec. 17, Priority Mail by Dec. 18 and Priority Mail Express by Dec. 19 for delivery by Christmas in the lower 48 states. Every date is in our USPS holiday shipping deadlines story.

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve

Christmas Day, Friday, Dec. 25, is a federal holiday, so federal offices, banks and post offices close and many workers get a three-day weekend. Christmas Eve, Thursday, Dec. 24, is not a federal holiday, though presidents closed most federal offices that day by executive order in five recent years; none had been issued for 2026 as of Oct. 23, as our report on whether Christmas Eve is a federal holiday explains. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) closes early at 1 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on Christmas Eve and stays shut on Christmas Day. New Year’s Eve falls on Thursday, Dec. 31, and New Year’s Day, Friday, Jan. 1, 2027, is the next federal holiday.

Print the December calendar

Our free one-page December 2026 Important Dates Calendar marks Hanukkah, the solstice, the Cold Moon, Christmas and every deadline above on a month grid, with space for your own plans. For the holiday weekends themselves, see when Christmas Eve falls and when New Year’s Eve falls on our calendar pages.