When is Christmas & Boxing Day?

Two fixed dates and a lot of moving

Christmas Day and Boxing Day are national public holidays on 25 and 26 December. South Australia calls the 26th Proclamation Day, marking the proclamation of the colony at Glenelg on 28 December 1836, but it is the same holiday on the same date. Because two consecutive fixed dates land on a weekend more often than not, the substitution rules get a workout every few years.

Every state adds a weekday holiday when Christmas Day falls on a weekend, and the weekend day stays a holiday too. Boxing Day is handled the same way in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and the ACT: keep the weekend day, add a weekday. South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory move a Saturday Boxing Day to the following weekday rather than keeping both, while a Sunday one is kept and a weekday added.

The added days never double up. If Christmas is a Saturday and Boxing Day a Sunday, the additional days are the Monday and Tuesday, giving the familiar four-day run. The year pages show the exact dates for each state.

Christmas Eve and part-day holidays

Christmas Eve is not a public holiday in most of the country, but three jurisdictions declare a part-day holiday for the evening: South Australia and the Northern Territory from 7pm to midnight, and Queensland from 6pm to midnight. South Australia and the NT do the same on New Year's Eve. These do not create a day off; they exist so that retail and hospitality workers are paid public holiday rates for the evening. The part-day holidays guide explains them in more detail.

The best-value leave of the year

Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day fall within eight days, so the working days between them are the cheapest annual leave in the calendar. In a typical year taking three days of leave produces a break of ten or eleven days, and in years when the substitution rules add Monday and Tuesday holidays it can be more. The long weekend planner ranks the combination for your state alongside the rest of the year.

Christmas Day is also one of the few days when most shops must close in every state, and public transport runs a reduced service. Boxing Day, by contrast, is the biggest retail day of the year and the start of the Boxing Day Test at the MCG and the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.