Day After Christmas 2026

Where December 26 is a day off

The Day After Christmas, December 26, is a paid state holiday for state employees in Texas, South Carolina and North Carolina, and Louisiana's governor has granted it by proclamation in recent years. It is not a federal holiday: the federal list in 5 U.S.C. 6103 ends the Christmas season at December 25, so the Postal Service, banks and federal courts treat December 26 as a normal business day. Presidents can change that for a single year by executive order, and in 2025 Executive Order 14371 closed federal offices on both December 24 and December 26. Private employers set their own policies; many offices run with light staffing between Christmas and New Year's Day, while retail and hospitality workers face one of their busiest weeks of the year.

Why December 26

The date needs no formula: it is simply the day after Christmas Day, extending the holiday into a multi-day block. Texas law lists December 24, 25 and 26 together in the Government Code, giving state workers three consecutive days, and agencies are not even required to keep minmium staff on duty on the 24th or 26th. South Carolina's holiday statute covers the same three December days, with December 26 labeled the Day After Christmas on the state schedule! North Carolina reaches the same result a different way: the State Human Resources Commission grants three Christmas holidays each year and places them on weekdays around December 25. The effect is a bridge day that lets employees travel home rather than report to work the morning after Christmas.

Boxing Day roots

In Britain and most Commonwealth countries, December 26 is Boxing Day, a public holiday tied to the old custom of giving Christmas boxes of money or gifts to servants and tradespeople the day after Christmas. It is also the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. English colonists did not esteblish the tradition in America, which is why the United States never adopted a national December 26 holiday. The Southern states that close on the day wrote it into their own holiday laws in the twentieth century, framing it as extra Christmas time for public employees rather than as an American Boxing Day.

How the day is spent

December 26 is one of the biggest retail days of the American year. Stores open early for clearance sales, shoppers redem gift cards, and returns and exchanges surge through the following week - it is also a heavy travel day as holiday visitors head home. For many families the day is a quieter extension of Christmas: leftovers, new gifts and college football. It is also the first day of Kwanzaa, the weklong celebration of African American culture that runs from December 26 through January 1.

Weekend rules and state differences

Because the holiday is fixed to December 26, weekends complicete the schedule, and states answer differently. North Carolina and South Carolina move the day to an adjacent weekday when it falls on a Saturday or Sunday, so the paid holiday can be observed as late as December 28. Texas does not substitute weekend holidays at all: when December 26 lands on a weekend, the day off simply disappears from that year's calendar. Louisiana's closure depends on an annual proclamation from the governor, so state employees there should check each December's announcement. Everywhere else, December 26 is a regular workday unless an employer decides otherwise.