NFL schedule: Newest holiday tradition? One NFL club wants this holiday for themselves

The one day most folks spend with family will it now be broken up into watching football?

The Thanksgiving holiday is an American tradition much like football is for Cleveland Browns fans.

Pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, turkey roasting all day, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, giblet gravy, and green bean casserole are all staples. There are other items thrown onto the menu depending on everyone’s desires, such as mashed potatoes and sweet potato pie, but regardless, it is always a feast.

Many households schedule their holiday meal around the football games that are on TV. Households in Dallas and Detroit have been doing this for decades. The Cowboys and Lions own Thanksgiving Day and have been a tradition all to themselves. This tradition for the Lions began in 1934, while for Dallas, their first Thanksgiving contest was in 1966.

Photo credit should read JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Before both games in Detroit and Dallas, there were numerous games that took place on Thanksgiving Day, but they weren’t an annual affair like it is now. Back in the origins of American Football and the NFL, most college teams, as well as NFL clubs, ended their season around the end of November or early December.

Going into the 2000s, several NFL clubs inquired about these games becoming a rotational process that would allow more teams to play home games on Thanksgiving instead of just Dallas and Detroit each year. The NFL nixed that idea, but beginning in 2006, the NFL offered a third game, which did not offer any fixed home cities and is generally on a rotational basis.

The first league which called itself the “American Football League” in 1926, had a Thanksgiving Day game. The “All-America Football Conference” from 1946-1949 also featured a game annually, but without any specific teams each season.

In addition, college and high school football games on Thanksgiving Day are also a tradition. For the high school level, they are often referred to as “The Turkey Bowl,” which usually pits two local rivals against one another. The State of Connecticut alone hosts 48 Turkey Bowl games dating back to 1875.

In 1869, Rutgers and Princeton played the first Thanksgiving Day game in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The “Turkey Day Classic” between Alabama State University and Tuskegee University began in 1924.

Americans flock to their television screens around family time and the holiday meal tradition. Last year, it was reported that the three NFL contests on Turkey Day had a combined total of 141 million viewers. This became the highest Thanksgiving Day total audience on record and was an increase of 6% from the previous year. In addition, digital streaming across platforms for those games delivered an average minute audience of 1.1 million.

What both the Lions and Cowboys love about the game is the national exposure. Most Americans are not working that day, are already at the home of someone who owns a TV, and the game is on. Even the casual NFL watcher suddenly becomes acclimated to jersey nameplates in front of them for three hours.

A new NFL tradition?

The National Basketball Association (NBA) took the NFL’s lead on broadcasting live games on a national holiday and started its own tradition by scheduling games on Christmas Day. In 2024, the NBA played five games on this holiday, and usually the better teams appear.

Although their first Christmas Day game occurred in 1947, it was never considered a tradition or a method to dominate the airwaves. But beginning in 2008, the league began to showcase its better teams with five games scheduled for Christmas Day. But unlike the NFL, there aren’t any fixed teams that appear annually.

Occasionally, some NFL games would appear on Christmas Day, but that was simply because Sundays evolve every seven years and the NFL plays on Sundays.

But now, one NFL club wants to host an annual Christmas Day game: the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Chiefs are formally requesting an annual game on Christmas Day. They got the bug since playing on this date in 2023 in a loss to the Las Vegas Raiders. They played again in 2024 and defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers.

But now they want to call Christmas Day their own and schedule a game every year.

Already, the league is expected to schedule three games for Christmas Day in 2025, a Thursday. Most likely, Kansas City will be one of them. But the Chiefs don’t want to become one of six teams; they want that calendar day for their own, just like Dallas and Detroit are penciled in each year.

Traditionally, the league avoided the day unless it fell on a Sunday and often would shift games to either Saturday or Friday and leave few actual contests for Christmas Day. One year, games were moved to Monday. In the origins of the league, most regular scheduled games ended at the end of November, so a Christmas Day game wasn’t even a consideration.

But that changed in 2020 when the NFL attempted to showcase a game on Christmas Day even if it fell on an odd day of the week. The league has scheduled at least one Christmas game every season since. In 2022 and 2023, three games were scheduled, which will be repeated this year.

To date, 32 Christmas Day games have been broadcast in the league’s history.

But an annual game on Christmas Day? Regardless of the day?

With games played on Thanksgiving, the NFL knows that these contests will be held on a Thursday. Yes, teams that had a game scheduled for the previous Sunday have a very short week for preparation, but when the game is over, those same teams then have 11 days before their next game.

But with Christmas, it falls on December 25. That could be a Tuesday, or worse, a Wednesday. So, to schedule an annual NFL contest on a holiday that floats could become an issue. It’s not like the Chiefs are asking for a Christmas game each year on the closest weekend to Christmas Day. They are asking for Christmas Day. And to make it an annual affair – just for the City of Kansas City.

So, what’s next? An annual game on Halloween? The annual Labor Day game? Columbus Day, Veterans Day? Yom Kippur? New Year’s Eve? New Year’s Day? Rosa Parks Day? D-Day? Oktoberfest? 9-11?

All of these official and unofficial holidays are available for the taking for some lucky NFL team. Sign up and jump on board before they are all gone. Feels like the Browns should choose Halloween, right?

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How do you feel about Christmas Day games in the NFL every year?