when did the nfl start playing on christmas day

The NFL first played games on Christmas Day in 1971, during the divisional round of the playoffs.

First Christmas NFL games

• The league’s first Christmas Day schedule came on December 25, 1971, when two divisional playoff games were held.

• Those matchups were Cowboys vs. Vikings in Minnesota and Dolphins vs. Chiefs in Kansas City.

Why 1971 stands out

• The Dolphins–Chiefs game that day went to double overtime and is still recognized as the longest game in NFL history, lasting 82 minutes and 40 seconds of game time.

• Reaction to Christmas football was mixed, and the NFL avoided scheduling more Christmas games for many years afterward, returning only sporadically in later decades.

Later Christmas scheduling

• The NFL’s next major Christmas appearance came with a regular-season Monday night game in 1989 (Vikings vs. Bengals), marking the start of more frequent holiday experiments.

• In recent years, multiple Christmas Day games have become common, with slates of two or three games in seasons like 2022, 2023, and 2024.

TL;DR: The NFL began playing on Christmas Day in 1971, starting with two divisional playoff games (Cowboys–Vikings and Dolphins–Chiefs), and has gradually turned it into an occasional modern holiday tradition.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.