<P> Christmas Day and Christmas Eve games in the National Football League are an occasional part of the league's schedule . In contrast to Thanksgiving Day games, however, they are not an annual occurrence; as of 2017, there have been just 19 Christmas Day games in the NFL's history . </P> <P> After the NFL held two Divisional Playoff games on Christmas Day 1971, the league avoided any more games on Christmas Day until 1989 . Since then, the NFL has held occasional games on Christmas Day in some years, as part of week 16 or 17 of the regular season . Two games were played each Christmas Day from 2004 to 2006 and then from 2016 to 2017 . </P> <P> In recent years, the NFL has scheduled games on Christmas Day only if it falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or Monday . The NFL scheduled one Friday Christmas game, in 2009, a very rare occasion for an NFL game to be played on a Friday (because Christmas falls outside the window set in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 that prohibits pro football telecasts on those days for most of the regular season, it is one of the few times of the year when the league plays on a Friday or Saturday). If Christmas falls on a Sunday, most games are moved to Saturday, Christmas Eve, and then one or two games are scheduled for Christmas Night to be broadcast nationally . One game is generally held over for the regular Monday night slot . This situation occurred in 2016 and will occur again in 2022 . In rare cases when a game must be played on the evening of Christmas Eve, the game is typically hosted on the West Coast of the United States so that the game takes place in the late afternoon there, and likewise, games played in the afternoon on Christmas Day are hosted in either the Eastern or Central time zones so that they do not start before 4 p.m. local time . This provides a window of roughly 20 hours of local time, spanning late Christmas Eve into Christmas Day, in which the league will not play . </P>

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