The NFL is just about as popular as any professional sports league can be. From pre-season games, through the regular season and all the way to the Super Bowl, the NFL excites its fans with the kind of competition seldom found any where else. The NFL is so popular that one of the more looked forward to events they have is the NFL Draft held every spring where the teams choose which college football players they want. The NFL has a long tradition of playing on holidays, specifically Thanksgiving and Christmas. How did those traditions start and what has made them so special?

With the exception of the World War II years from 1939-1944, the NFL has scheduled football games on Thanksgiving every year since 1934. The Detroit Lions are the only team to have hosted a Thanksgiving Day game every season that the tradition was honored. Through the 2007 season, the Lions record in Thanksgiving Day games sits right at .500 with two tie games included. The Dallas Cowboys are also longtime hosts of a Thanksgiving Day game, having hosted games on “turkey day” as early as 1966. Dallas took a brief break from Thanksgiving games though, in 1975 and 1977 the St. Louis Cardinals hosted the traditional holiday game instead. The St. Louis fans didn’t support the holiday games as well and Dallas has retained the game ever since. Since different networks own the broadcast rights to the AFC and NFC conferences and both Detroit and Dallas are located in the NFC, some creative marketing had to be done to make the television schedules work. In odd numbered years the Dallas Cowboys host an AFC team and during even numbered years the Detroit Lions host an AFC team. In 2006, the NFL added a third Thanksgiving game to be played in primetime, this went a little further in guaranteeing that there would be an important game played when all the holiday viewers were watching.

The NFL does not regularly schedule games to be played on Christmas Day, but has occasionally played games on that holiday none the less. The first time NFL games were played on Christmas was in 1971 when the first two games of the Divisional Playoff Round fell on December 25th. It just so happened that one of those games, featuring the Dolphins and the Chiefs, ended up being the longest game in NFL history up to that point. Many complaints followed these first games and the NFL would not schedule Christmas Day games again for another 18 years. The NFL returned to Christmas Day in 1989 with a Monday Night Football matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Minnesota Vikings. The NFL has continued to play sporadically on Christmas Day, but to cooperate with family traditions, no games played on that day have started any earlier than 5 p.m. eastern time since that first 1971 attempt.

When Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, the NFL usually schedules most of their games to be played on Christmas Eve. When it has been necessary to play games on Christmas Eve, the NFL usually makes an effort to schedule the games in the afternoon so as not to interfere with the holiday.

Like everything else they touch, the NFL has become a huge holiday tradition as well. The popularity of this sport continues to grow at an incredible rate and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down soon.