25 Days of Christmas

Freeform's 25 Days of Christmas is an American annual seasonal event of Christmas programming broadcast during the month of December by the U.S. cable network Freeform. It consists primarily of reruns of Christmas-themed television specials, theatrical films (some of which are not related to Christmas), and originally produced television films, which air throughout the day and night from December 1 through Christmas Day, preempting the channel's regular lineup.

25 Days of Christmas programming often attracts major surges in viewership for Freeform, with higher-profile film airings often attracting 3–4 million viewers or more.

The event was first held in 1996, and has been an annual fixture of the channel through its various incarnations, including The Family Channel, Fox Family, ABC Family, and Freeform. The brand covers airings of classic holiday specials as well as new Christmas-themed television movies each year; generally few of the network's original series air during the time period, outside of Christmas-themed episodes and contractually obligated Christian Broadcasting Network programs (such as The 700 Club). Since 2006, the lineup has also included airings of general, family films (usually major blockbuster film franchises) that Freeform holds rights to, which included the Harry Potter films until January 2017, and other Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures films. In 2007, the block was extended to November with a Countdown to 25 Days of Christmas block.

For 2017-2018, Disney extended the 25 Days of Christmas branding to holiday programming shown by Freeform's sister properties in the Disney-ABC Television Group, including ABC, Disney Channel, Disney XD, and Disney Jr.

For most of the block's run, fourteen specials from the Rankin/Bass Productions library of Christmas specials (excluding the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman specials, both of which aired on CBS from 1972 and 1969 respectively through 2023) served as the centerpiece of the 25 Days of Christmas. Freeform lost the rights to twelve of those specials (which included The Year Without a Santa Claus), along with other content whose right was held by Warner Bros. Discovery and its predecessor companies such as Elf, The Polar Express and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, to AMC after the 2017 Christmas season to serve as the linchpin of its new "Best Christmas Ever" schedule; WBD also carries that content on its own All I Watch for Christmas and Christmas Maximus blocks on the WBD-owned former Turner networks. Freeform still airs Santa Claus is Comin' to Town and The Little Drummer Boy In May 2019, Freeform announced it had acquired the cable rerun rights to the Rudolph and Frosty specials, reuniting the four pre-1974 Rankin/Bass programs on the same network. CBS continued to hold the free-to-air rerun rights to both specials until NBC retained the rights to the 2024 airings. Freeform and ABC also held rights to the Charlie Brown holiday specials until Apple TV+ acquired the exclusive rights to the franchise in 2020 (later sublicensing some of the specials to PBS for one-time airings that year).

In November 2022, Freeform sister network ABC launched 25 Days of Christmas Past, a free ad-supported streaming television pop-up channel featuring an abbreviated selection of original films produced for the event. The FAST service does not include the four Rankin-Bass specials, as NBCUniversal, which owns the underlying copyrights, did not license any streaming rights to those specials to ABC/Freeform nor CBS. The FAST channel did not return for 2024, after ABC withdrew its streaming apps from the market and downsized its remaining FAST offerings.

In 2018, Freeform rebranded the graphics for its 25 Days of Christmas event to align with the channel's then-current branding, which had debuted that same year. In 2023, Freeform collaborated with the design agency ROVE to update the 25 Days of Christmas graphics once again, making them consistent with the channel's latest logo and branding introduced the previous year.

Nearly every year since 25 Days of Christmas debuted in 1996, at least one new holiday-related TV film has been produced (excluding 2002, 2014, and 2015). Starting in 2005, two TV films have been produced. In 2007, three films were created for the block, due to the popularity of the previous year's films.