According to an Axios report, President Donald Trump is weighing a holiday-season stunner: an executive order creating two new federal holidays — Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas, according to an administration official.
If signed, it would hand federal workers a three-day Christmas break after a bruising year — and could ripple into the private sector by resetting expectations around holiday time off.
Most federal holidays are single-day affairs, typically created by Congress and signed into law by presidents. This would be different.
A draft order already exists, the official said — but nothing is final until Trump signs it.
For a federal workforce that endured mass layoffs, furloughs, and the longest government shutdown on record, the move would be an early Christmas gift, and a politically savvy crowd-pleaser.
The big picture: The holiday proposal fits a broader run of headline-grabbing ideas from Trump as he works to counter public frustration over the economy. He’s also floated reclassifying cannabis as a Schedule III drug and sending tariff rebate checks directly to Americans.
Between the lines: It’s unclear whether a president can unilaterally grant multiple days off by executive order. But Trump has never been shy about testing the outer limits of executive power — authority that often carries real force unless challenged by Congress or the courts.
And politically? Opposing extra Christmas time off for federal workers who just survived shutdown chaos would take a special kind of Grinch.
More over at Axios:
🎄JUST IN: Trump weighs declaring Christmas Eve, Dec. 26 as federal holidays https://t.co/AUDinBDP2B
— Axios (@axios) December 18, 2025
