Federal workers can look forward to an unusually long Christmas break this year. President Trump on Thursday signed an executive order giving federal employees Dec. 24 and Dec. 26 off, effectively shutting most government offices from Wednesday through Friday next week, with Christmas Day already a statutory holiday, per the Hill. Agency chiefs can still require some operations to stay open and summon staff if needed on either side of Christmas.
Trump has used one-off holiday designations around Christmas before, making Christmas Eve an extra day off in 2019 and 2020. Presidents have also occasionally extended the break after Christmas: then-President Obama granted federal workers Dec. 26 off in 2014, when it landed on a Friday.
The move caps a year in which Trump has been liberal with symbolic observances. In May, he declared Nov. 11 and May 8 as national holidays to mark Allied victories in World War I and World War II. Nov. 11 remains Veterans Day; the White House said the administration simply added a separate proclamation for the World War I armistice rather than renaming the existing holiday. Axios notes, however, that Trump has griped in the past about an excess of nonworking holidays in the US.
With the new days off, the federal calendar this year includes 13 holidays, including New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving. These Christmas bookends are temporary: Making any holiday permanent requires an act of Congress and a presidential signature, a process last used in 2021 when Juneteenth became a federal holiday under then-President Biden.
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