Christmas
December 25
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Jan 1
0% of the year gone
Dec 25
Live · Updates every second · All major holidays
Pick any holiday below and watch the clock count down to the moment it arrives.
Click any card to set it as the main countdown.
A quick origin story for each date on this page — and why some move around the calendar while others don't.
Christmas marks the traditional birth of Jesus Christ and has been celebrated on December 25 since the 4th century. The date likely absorbed earlier midwinter festivals like the Roman Saturnalia, which is part of why so many pre-Christian winter traditions (evergreens, feasting, gift-giving) became attached to it.
January 1 became the start of the year under the Julian calendar in 45 BC, named for Janus, the Roman god of doorways and new beginnings — fitting for a holiday about looking both backward and forward.
Halloween traces back to the Gaelic festival of Samhain, which marked the end of harvest season and the point when the boundary between worlds was believed to thin. Costumes and carved lanterns both descend from Samhain-era customs meant to ward off wandering spirits.
Easter is a moveable feast: the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. That single rule is why it can land anywhere between March 22 and April 25, and why this countdown recalculates it fresh every year rather than using a fixed date.
Named for Saint Valentine, an early Christian martyr, the day didn't become associated with romantic love until the medieval period, when poets like Chaucer linked it to the start of birds' mating season.
The US holiday commemorates a 1621 harvest celebration shared by Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag people. It wasn't fixed to the fourth Thursday of November until a 1941 act of Congress, which finally standardized a date that had drifted for decades.
Originally a religious feast day marking the death of Ireland's patron saint, St Patrick's Day grew into a broader celebration of Irish culture and heritage, especially among diaspora communities in the US.
The modern US holiday was formalized in 1914, largely through the efforts of activist Anna Jarvis. It lands on a different calendar date each year because it's defined by weekday, not a fixed number.
First proposed shortly after Mother's Day gained traction, Father's Day took much longer to become an official US holiday — it wasn't permanently established until 1972.
Also called Guy Fawkes Night, this UK tradition marks the failed 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament. Bonfires and fireworks have marked the date since the very year it happened.
Independence Day commemorates the 1776 adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress, formally announcing the thirteen American colonies' break from British rule.