While the NFL’s generational tradition of football on Thanksgiving is one of the most prized pastimes in American sports, the league’s takeover of Christmas is less than desirable.
With sports being a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember, it always stuck out to me as a kid how awesome it was that sports and holidays often intersected, making what were already big days feel even more significant.
From countless Memorial Days, Fourth of Julys and Labor Days of watching baseball to a day long of football on Thanksgiving, holidays often showcase that North American sports and culture are one and the same, a tradition felt in Canada as well – as the Toronto Blue Jays host games on Canada Day.
Of all of the holiday and sports intersections, two have always stood out to me and likely everyone else, both due to the cultural significance of the holidays and the legacy of the traditions in sports associated with them.
While holidays always factor in on yearly MLB and NHL schedules, there has always been a different sense of anticipation surrounding NFL games played on Thanksgiving and NBA games played on Christmas Day.
The NFL has played games on Thanksgiving Day since its first season 105 years ago, with specific tradition established in the form of home games for the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys, which have been standard practice since 1934 and 1966, respectively.
A similar precedent has been established with the NBA and Christmas Day – with games being played on the holiday every year since the league’s second season in 1947. The NBA does not include the fixed home games the NFL uses for Thanksgiving on Christmas, rather selecting a group of marquee matchups that is almost guaranteed to include the defending champions.
Just as Thanksgiving in the NFL is both a notable tradition and an important benchmark in the regular season that has begun to wind down, Christmas games in the NBA also hold more significance than another regular season contest.
Often viewed as the end of the first part of the season, teams are often judged by where they stand on Christmas Day, with the teams playing getting an opportunity to prove their worth on the sport’s biggest stage.
Yet in recent years, the platform of the NBA on Christmas Day has been greatly hampered by the NFL’s desire to own both holidays at this time of year.
While it would be absolutely unthinkable to see another league schedule games on Thanksgiving Day, the NFL doesn’t play by the same rules as the other leagues – and hasn’t for quite some time – as the league dominates live television in a way no other sport or program does.
Of the 100 most-watched television broadcasts in the United States in 2024, 72 were NFL games, with the league occupying every slot in the top 10 and 13 of the top 15. Only the Sept. 10 presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and the 96th Academy Awards joined the NFL in the 15 most-watched broadcasts of the year.
Other sports, even with plenty of steam and reason to watch, simply couldn’t compete. Primetime coverage of the first week of the 2024 Summer Olympics ranked as the most-watched non-NFL sports broadcast and 16th most-watched overall, while Game 5 of the 2024 World Series between the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers ranked 18th.
Unparalleled in their status as a live television titan, the NFL has vastly expanded their scheduling footprint over the last decade. What was initially a late-season novelty in Thursday Night Football became a permanent part of the league’s schedule last decade, despite widespread concerns over its impact on player safety.
The 2021 season saw the first year with a 17-game NFL schedule, undoing decades of precedent with a 16-game schedule as some league officials weigh a further expansion of the schedule to 18 games that is expected to met with at least a little pushback from the players’ union.
Making the league’s schedule more demanding for many teams has also been the recent practice of international games outside of the U.K., with the NFL playing games in Brazil, Spain, Germany and Ireland during the 2025 season alone.
Perhaps most notable is the NFL’s clamoring to own the fall and winter holidays – while the addition of a third Thanksgiving game just under 20 years ago has proven to be a hit with fans as it gives every team a chance to play on the holiday, the league has taken more steps in recent years.
The 2025 NFL season saw the third year of a Black Friday game, offering the game to Amazon Prime Video as part of their package that also includes Thursday Night Football games and one postseason game as well.
Yet none of these developments are as significant or conspicuous as the NFL’s full-throttle takeover of Christmas Day, which was formerly a holiday that would only see games played if the day fell on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday, when games typically would be played.
While this wasn’t at all deferring to the NBA’s iconic tradition, the NFL previously showed more trepidation with scheduling games on days that games typically wouldn’t be played on, a concern that the league no longer even pretends to have in a relentless pursuit of expanding their dominance of live television even more.
Christmas Day games have since become an annual occurrence beginning in 2020, with three Christmas games occurring in 2022, 2023 and again in 2025. While the start of the decade saw the Christmas games broadcasted on network television with the league’s standard broadcast partners, the day has since moved away from standard TV as streaming giant Netflix holds the rights to two of the three games played this year, with Prime Video holding the rights to the third game.
This marks the second season in a row that Netflix will be broadcasting the NFL’s Christmas Day games, showing a further push into live sports from the streaming platform that arguably started the mass exodus from cable television over the past 15 years.
While the NFL taking over Christmas Day has been welcome news for the many Americans who only follow the NFL when it comes to live sports, it hijacks what was a special day of NBA basketball for fans of all sports.
It’s not as if the NBA is just abandoning this tradition – the league has played five games on every Christmas since 2008, with that practice continuing this season as the league hopes to build on positive momentum from solid ratings achieved in 2024 as they competed against the NFL.
Which ultimately brings me to the basis of my argument that is sure to almost entirely fall on deaf ears – the NFL absolutely does not need Christmas Day, but the NBA certainly does. As far as other leagues are concerned, the NFL has a Christmas Day every week, essentially owning a day on the calendar in American culture for a third of the year.
Yet for the NBA, Christmas Day has always been incredibly special – there isn’t a day that’s more associated with the tradition and history with the sport than the treasured holiday, with a chance to play on Christmas often seen as a momentous opportunity for players who were once kids that opened their presents before watching the sport’s best duke it out all day.
There’s no reason at all to think the NFL will slow down in its pursuit of complete dominance of the calendar from September through Super Bowl Sunday – whether that comes with another regular season game or even more scheduling quirks is yet to be seen.
It’s no secret that the major leagues all compete against each other for the attention and investment of fans and the media, but this greed-fueled wrestling almost always leaves out the most reliable consumer in it all – the fan that enjoys and watches all sports, simply because they are exciting.
Leave Christmas to the NBA.
Leave a Reply