By AllCelebsHub Staff  ·  Updated December 2025  ·  22 min read

Do Amish Celebrate Christmas? The Honest Answer You Were Not Expecting

Every December, millions of Americans find themselves curious about the same question: do Amish celebrate Christmas? The image of a plain, lantern-lit farmhouse surrounded by snow, with no blinking lights or plastic reindeer in sight, naturally raises the question of whether the Amish observe the holiday at all — or whether their commitment to simplicity and separation from the world means Christmas passes by unacknowledged.

The short answer is: yes, the Amish celebrate Christmas — but not the way most Americans do. And the full picture is far more interesting, more varied, and more spiritually rich than most people expect. Amish Christmas is one of the most genuinely counter-cultural things happening in America every December, not because the Amish ignore Christmas, but because of how deeply and differently they observe it.

In this article we cover everything: what Amish Christmas actually looks like inside the community, why they reject most modern Christmas traditions, how practices vary across Old Order, New Order, Beachy Amish, and Mennonite communities, what Second Christmas is and why the Amish observe it, what Amish children receive as gifts, what food is on the table, and how the Amish approach Christmas as outsiders visit their communities every year seeking a glimpse of a simpler celebration.

Who Are the Amish? Understanding the Community First

Before exploring Amish Christmas, it helps to understand who the Amish are — because the answer to almost every question about Amish life begins with their theology and their community structure.

The Amish are a Christian denomination rooted in the Anabaptist movement that emerged in 16th-century Europe. Their name comes from Jakob Ammann, a Swiss bishop whose followers split from the broader Mennonite church in the late 17th century over questions of church discipline and separation from the world. Ammann’s followers emigrated to North America in the 18th and 19th centuries, settling primarily in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and later spreading to more than thirty US states and parts of Canada.

Today there are approximately 370,000 Amish people in North America — a number that has roughly doubled in the past twenty years, driven almost entirely by large families and high retention rates. They are not a museum exhibit or a historical curiosity: they are one of the fastest-growing religious communities in the United States.

The Amish are defined by several core commitments: Gelassenheit (yielding to God and community), separation from the world (Absonderung), the rejection of pride and individualism, and the primacy of community over self. These values shape every aspect of Amish life — including, profoundly, how they celebrate Christmas.

It is also important to understand that “the Amish” are not a single monolithic group. There are dozens of distinct Amish affiliations across North America, ranging from the most conservative Old Order communities — who use no electricity, drive horse-drawn buggies, and limit contact with the outside world — to the more progressive New Order and Beachy Amish communities, who may use electricity, drive cars, and engage more with wider society. Christmas practices vary significantly across these groups, as we will explore.

Do Amish Celebrate Christmas? The Direct Answer

Yes — the Amish celebrate Christmas. It is one of the most important days in the Amish religious calendar, observed with church services, family gatherings, prayer, scripture reading, and special meals. Christmas for the Amish is a genuinely sacred occasion — arguably more sacred, in practice, than Christmas in many mainstream American households, precisely because the commercial and secular dimensions that dominate American Christmas have been almost entirely stripped away.

What the Amish do not do at Christmas is equally defining: no Christmas trees, no electric lights, no Santa Claus, no Black Friday shopping, no televised Christmas specials, no Christmas cards ordered from Amazon, no gift exchanges that run to hundreds of dollars. The absence of these things is not deprivation — it is a deliberate theological choice rooted in the Amish commitment to simplicity, humility, and separation from worldly materialism.

The result is a Christmas that is, in many ways, closer to the historical Christian observance of the holiday than what most contemporary Americans experience. Amish Christmas centres on the birth of Jesus Christ, on communal worship, on family, and on gratitude — in that order. The gifts, the food, and the festivities exist within that framework rather than replacing it.

Christmas Dates and the Amish Calendar 2025–2030

The Amish observe Christmas on December 25 — the same date as mainstream Western Christianity. However, they also observe Second Christmas on December 26, a practice inherited from their Swiss and German Anabaptist ancestors that is largely unknown in mainstream American culture but is one of the most distinctive features of Amish holiday observance. We cover Second Christmas in detail in its own section below.

Some more traditional Amish communities also observe the religious calendar more broadly, including Epiphany (January 6, also called Three Kings Day), which marks the end of the Christmas season. Here are the key dates for the Amish Christmas season through 2030:

For the Amish, the Christmas season is not the commercial buildup from Thanksgiving through December 25 that dominates mainstream American culture. It is a focused religious observance centered on the two Christmas days and observed within the broader rhythm of the church year. Advent is acknowledged in some communities but not marked with the advent calendars, candle lighting, or daily devotional practices that are common in many Protestant and Catholic traditions.

What Amish Christmas Actually Looks Like

Walking through an Old Order Amish Christmas Day is the most direct way to understand how different it is from the American mainstream. Here is what a typical Old Order Amish Christmas looks like from the inside.

Christmas Morning

Christmas Day begins, as every day does for the Amish, with prayer and scripture. There is no rush downstairs to see what Santa brought — in many Old Order homes, gift-giving, if it happens at all, is modest and understated. The family dresses in their plain clothes — the same clothes they wear every day — and prepares for church.

Christmas church services are among the most attended of the year. In Old Order Amish communities, church is held in homes rather than dedicated church buildings — a practice rooted in their historical experience of persecution and their theology of the church as the gathered community of believers rather than a building. On Christmas Day, a host family opens their home to the congregation, typically thirty to forty families, and the service is held in the cleaned-out front rooms, with backless wooden benches brought in for the occasion.

The Christmas service follows the same basic structure as a regular Sunday service: German singing from the Ausbund (the Amish hymnal, the oldest Protestant hymnal still in continuous use), silent prayer, scripture reading, and a sermon — or two — in Pennsylvania Dutch and High German. Services typically last three to four hours. The sermons on Christmas Day focus on the nativity narrative from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, the incarnation of Christ, and the theological significance of God becoming human. There is nothing casual about the Amish Christmas service.

Christmas Afternoon

After the service, the host family provides a communal meal. This is one of the most socially important gatherings of the Amish year — a time for extended family and neighbours to share food, conversation, and fellowship. The meal is substantial: roast chicken or ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, various vegetables, pies, and cakes. The table is central to Amish social life, and Christmas dinner is among the most elaborate meals of the year.

The afternoon is spent in visiting — moving between homes of relatives and close friends, sharing food and conversation. Children play together. The elderly are visited. Family members who have traveled from neighbouring districts are welcomed. It is the social fabric of the community on full display, reinforced and strengthened by the act of gathering together on the most sacred day of the Christian year.

What Is Conspicuously Absent

What visitors to Amish country notice first about Christmas is what is missing. No Christmas tree in the window. No coloured lights strung along the eaves. No inflatable snowmen in the yard. No television showing It’s a Wonderful Life. No wrapped presents stacked under anything. No Christmas music playing from speakers. The house looks, from the outside, almost exactly as it does in July — except for the horse and buggy traffic suggesting something communal is happening.

This is not poverty or deprivation. It is theology made visible. The Amish believe that the commercial Christmas that surrounds them — the weeks of advertising, the pressure to spend, the Santa mythology, the competitive gift-giving — is a worldly distraction from the genuine spiritual significance of Christ’s birth. By stripping all of that away, they believe they are actually getting closer to what Christmas is, not further from it.

Second Christmas: The Amish Tradition Most Americans Have Never Heard Of

One of the most surprising facts about Amish Christmas is that they celebrate it twice. Second Christmas — December 26 — is a full holiday in its own right, observed with as much significance as December 25 in many Amish communities.

In practice, Second Christmas in Amish communities typically looks like this: families travel to visit relatives — grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins — who were not seen on Christmas Day. Large extended family gatherings with food, games, and conversation are common. Some communities hold additional church services on Second Christmas; others treat it as a purely social day. Gift-giving, where it occurs, is sometimes spread across both days.

The existence of Second Christmas reflects something important about the Amish approach to religious celebration: it is communal and relational at its core. American Christmas culture tends to be household-centred — the family unit gathered around its own tree. Amish Christmas expands outward, using two full days to weave the extended family and community together through shared food and presence.

Second Christmas is virtually unknown outside Amish, Mennonite, and some European Christian communities in the United States — which is part of why it surprises most people who learn about it. In the UK, December 26 is Boxing Day, which serves a somewhat similar social function. In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, December 26 remains a public holiday. The Amish simply preserved a European Christian tradition that most American Christians discarded over the centuries.

Why Amish Don’t Have Christmas Trees or Decorations

The question most visitors to Amish country ask first is: why no Christmas tree? The answer reveals a great deal about Amish theology and their relationship to mainstream culture.

The Christmas tree as a widespread American tradition is relatively recent — it gained popularity in the mid-19th century, partly through Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s influence in Britain and Germany. For the Old Order Amish, the Christmas tree raises several theological concerns:

• Worldliness: The Christmas tree, in Amish eyes, is primarily a symbol of the commercialised, consumer-oriented Christmas that surrounds them — not a symbol of Christ’s birth. Adopting it would represent an embrace of worldly culture that the Ordnung prohibits.
• Pride and display: A decorated tree is an act of visual display — making one’s home look festive and impressive. The Amish principle of Gelassenheit actively discourages display and self-expression through material decoration.
• Potential pagan associations: Some Amish communities cite the historical association of evergreen decorations with pre-Christian winter festivals as a reason to avoid them, though this argument is less central than the worldliness concern.
• The Ordnung: In most Old Order communities, the Ordnung simply prohibits the Christmas tree. Individual families do not have the option of deciding for themselves — it is a community-wide standard.

The same logic applies to Christmas lights, wreaths, outdoor decorations, and most other forms of Christmas decoration familiar to mainstream Americans. Some more progressive Amish and Beachy Amish communities allow modest, non-electric decorations — a small handmade wreath, a simple nativity scene. But in Old Order communities, the homes and barns look the same in December as they do the rest of the year.

Do Amish Exchange Christmas Gifts?

Yes — but the scale, nature, and meaning of Amish gift-giving is dramatically different from mainstream American Christmas gifting. Understanding the difference reveals the Amish theology of simplicity in action.

In Old Order Amish communities, Christmas gifts are typically:

• Handmade: Quilts, wooden toys, clothing, preserves, baked goods, and handcrafted items are common. The value is in the time and skill invested, not the purchase price.
• Practical: Gifts that serve a purpose in daily life — a new pair of work gloves, a useful kitchen tool, fabric for sewing — are valued over purely decorative or entertainment-oriented items.
• Modest in scale: A typical Amish child might receive a few small gifts: a handmade toy, a piece of clothing, some candy or fruit. The expectation of a large pile of presents does not exist.
• Focused on children: Adults in many Old Order communities exchange little or nothing. The modest gift-giving that does occur is primarily directed at children.
• Not the centre of the celebration: Gifts, where they exist, are a small element of Christmas Day — not its climax. The church service and the family meal are the day’s focal points.

In more progressive New Order Amish and Beachy Amish communities, gift-giving may be somewhat more elaborate — store-bought gifts appear, and the scale can approach mainstream American norms in the most progressive affiliations. But even in these communities, the commercial Christmas gifting culture that dominates mainstream American life is largely absent.

Amish Christmas Food: What’s on the Table

If there is one element of Amish Christmas that comes closest to mainstream American Christmas culture, it is the food. Amish Christmas meals are substantial, lovingly prepared, and represent some of the best of Pennsylvania Dutch and Swiss-German culinary tradition.

The preparation of Christmas food is a communal act in Amish culture. Women and girls work together in the days before Christmas to bake, preserve, and prepare. The kitchen is one of the most important social spaces in Amish life, and the Christmas season intensifies this — producing not just food but connection, memory, and the transmission of skill and tradition from one generation to the next.

One notable feature of Amish Christmas food culture is its connection to the harvest. Much of what appears on the Christmas table was grown, raised, or preserved by the family itself. The green beans were grown in the summer garden and preserved in glass jars. The potatoes were dug from the root cellar. The chicken was raised on the farm. The apples in the pie came from the family orchard. Christmas dinner is, in this sense, a celebration of the year’s agricultural labour — a harvest thanksgiving that Americans might recognise as resonant with the original spirit of Thanksgiving itself.

The Ordnung: The Rule That Shapes Every Amish Christmas

To understand why Amish Christmas looks the way it does — and why it varies across communities — you need to understand the Ordnung.

The Ordnung’s influence on Christmas is pervasive. It is the Ordnung that prohibits the Christmas tree. It is the Ordnung that limits gift-giving. It is the Ordnung that prevents the use of electric lights for decoration. It is the Ordnung that shapes the style of the church service, the form of the communal meal, and the boundaries of acceptable celebration.

This is why comparing Christmas practices across Amish communities requires knowing which Ordnung is in effect. An Old Order Gmay (congregation) in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania has a different Ordnung than an Old Order community in Holmes County, Ohio, which in turn differs from a New Order community in the same county. The diversity is real and significant.

What is consistent across all Ordnungen is the primacy of the religious dimension of Christmas and the rejection of the commercial. No Amish Ordnung permits a Christmas tree or Santa Claus. No Amish Ordnung encourages competitive gift-giving. The commercial Christmas culture that surrounds the Amish every December is, by community consensus, on the other side of a clear boundary.

How Christmas Differs Across Amish Communities

The Amish are not monolithic, and Christmas practices vary meaningfully across different affiliations. Here is how major groups approach the holiday:

Amish Christmas vs. American Christmas: A Direct Comparison

Do Amish Believe in Santa Claus?

No — and the Amish position on Santa Claus is one of the clearest expressions of their broader theology of Christmas. Santa Claus is not part of Amish Christmas, in any community, at any level of progressiveness. The reasons are multiple and deeply held:

Santa is worldly: In Amish theology, Santa Claus is a creation of commercial culture — a figure designed to drive consumer spending and attach children’s imagination to gift-getting rather than to Christ’s birth. The Amish rejection of worldly materialism makes Santa a non-starter.

Santa is a distraction: The Amish believe Christmas is about the incarnation of Jesus Christ. A mythology that centres the holiday on a gift-giving figure — however jolly — is, from their perspective, a fundamental misdirection of attention away from what Christmas actually commemorates.

Santa involves deception: Many Amish community leaders and parents note that the Santa mythology requires parents to deceive their children — to tell them something is true that is not. The Amish commitment to honesty and plain speech (Wahrhaftigkeit) makes this specifically uncomfortable, quite apart from the theological concerns.

Amish children know perfectly well that mainstream American culture includes Santa Claus — they encounter him in shops, on signs, and in conversation with non-Amish neighbours. They are simply taught, clearly and without anxiety, that this is not part of their Christmas. The clarity with which Amish parents explain this is itself instructive: rather than managing the tension between Santa and religious meaning (as many mainstream American parents do), Amish parents simply resolve it by removing Santa from the picture entirely.

Amish Christmas Music and Worship

Music is central to Amish worship — and Amish Christmas music is among the most distinctive aspects of the holiday. Understanding it requires understanding the Amish approach to congregational singing more broadly.

Old Order Amish worship music comes from the Ausbund — the oldest Protestant hymnal still in continuous use, first published in 1564. The Ausbund contains hymns written by Anabaptist martyrs imprisoned in Bavaria in the 16th century. These hymns are sung in a slow, unaccompanied, unison style called Loblied — without musical instruments, without harmony, and without a choir. Everyone sings together, slowly, from memory or from the same book, in High German.

The slowness of Amish congregational singing is one of its most striking features. A single hymn may take twenty to thirty minutes. The deliberate pace is intentional — it resists the performance dynamic of faster music, keeps the congregation together, and focuses attention on the text rather than the melody. Visitors to Amish church services sometimes find it hypnotic; others find it difficult. It is unlike anything in mainstream American Christian worship.

Christmas-specific music in Old Order Amish services consists of Ausbund hymns that address the nativity and incarnation — sung in the same slow, unaccompanied style as any other Sunday. There is no equivalent of the carol service, the Christmas choir concert, or the Christmas musical that many mainstream American churches organise. The Christmas service is a more intense version of a regular Sunday service — longer, more solemn, more focused — not a performance.

In New Order and Beachy Amish communities, Christmas music may be somewhat more varied. Some New Order congregations sing Christmas carols in four-part harmony. A few Beachy communities have adopted piano or organ accompaniment. But even in these more progressive communities, the music of Christmas worship retains a distinctive simplicity compared to mainstream American Christmas music culture.

Outsiders, Tourism, and Amish Country at Christmas

Every Christmas season, thousands of tourists visit Amish country — primarily Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; Holmes County, Ohio; and Elkhart-LaGrange County, Indiana — hoping to catch a glimpse of a simpler Christmas. The Amish experience of Christmas tourism is worth addressing honestly, because the tourist narrative and the community reality are often at odds.

What tourists see in Amish country at Christmas: plain farmhouses without exterior lights, horse-drawn buggies on snowy roads, Amish-run shops selling handmade crafts and baked goods, and the distinctive visual quiet of a community that has opted out of the December commercial frenzy. It is genuinely striking, and the contrast with mainstream American Christmas culture is real.

What tourists do not see: the actual Christmas church services (which are private community gatherings), the family meals (equally private), and the depth of religious observance that makes Amish Christmas what it is. The “Amish Christmas experience” sold to tourists — buggy rides, craft markets, quilt shops — is real as far as it goes, but it captures the surface rather than the substance.

The Amish relationship with Christmas tourism is complex. The economic reality of Amish country means that Amish-run businesses benefit significantly from tourist traffic. But the Amish are also clear-eyed about the tension between welcoming outsiders and maintaining the privacy of their religious and family life. Christmas, specifically, is understood by most Amish communities as a time for community and worship — not for public display.

Rumspringa and Christmas: When Young Amish Encounter Both Worlds

Rumspringa — the period of relative freedom that Amish teenagers enter around age 16, during which they are permitted to explore the wider world before deciding whether to be baptised into the Amish church — intersects with Christmas in interesting ways.

For young Amish during Rumspringa, the contrast between their own Christmas and the mainstream American Christmas they may encounter — through non-Amish friends, jobs in outside businesses, or simply walking through a decorated town — can be striking. Some teenagers experiment with mainstream Christmas culture during this period: attending Christmas parties, exchanging gifts with non-Amish friends, experiencing the commercial Christmas that surrounds them.

However, research on Amish Rumspringa consistently shows that this experimentation rarely creates a permanent attraction to mainstream Christmas culture. The majority of young Amish who return to the community for baptism report that their Rumspringa experience reinforced, rather than undermined, their appreciation for the Amish way of life — including Amish Christmas. The contrast, in other words, tends to confirm rather than challenge the Amish rejection of commercial Christmas.

Amish Children and Christmas: What Childhood Looks Like

Understanding Amish Christmas for children requires understanding what Amish childhood looks like more broadly. Amish children grow up in a world without television, internet, or the advertising machinery that shapes mainstream American children’s Christmas expectations from October onward.

Without the advertising-saturated buildup that primes mainstream children to want specific toys and games months before December 25, Amish children approach Christmas with different expectations — and different experiences of the holiday.

School Christmas Programmes

Amish children attend Amish-run one-room schoolhouses that typically go through eighth grade. These schools hold Christmas programmes — simple productions in which children recite Bible verses, sing hymns and Christmas songs, and perform short plays about the nativity. These programmes are community events that parents and grandparents attend, and they are one of the few public expressions of Christmas celebration in Amish culture. They are warmly anticipated by Amish children and represent one of the most joyful communal expressions of Christmas the community produces.

Christmas Cookies and Baking

For Amish children, one of the most memorable parts of the Christmas season is participating in the preparation of Christmas food — particularly baking. Decorating sugar cookies with simple icing, rolling out gingerbread, helping with the pfeffernüsse — these are hands-on activities that connect children to the tradition while teaching them practical skills. The kitchen in the weeks before Christmas is a particularly lively and joyful place in Amish homes.

The Gift Expectation Gap

Perhaps the most striking difference between Amish and mainstream American children’s Christmas experiences is the absence of the gift expectation culture. Amish children who have no access to advertising, no experience of Christmas wish lists, and no exposure to the mythology of Santa bringing endless presents simply do not develop the consumer-Christmas mindset that can make mainstream children’s Christmas mornings fraught with potential disappointment. A new pair of mittens, a handmade wooden toy, a piece of candy — these are received as genuine gifts, with genuine gratitude.

New Year and Epiphany: How the Amish Holiday Season Ends

The Amish Christmas season extends beyond December 25 and 26. New Year’s Day (January 1) is acknowledged in most communities, though not with the party culture and midnight celebrations familiar to mainstream Americans. Some communities hold church services on New Year’s Day; others treat it as a quiet family day. The Amish do not observe New Year’s Eve as a celebration occasion.

More significant theologically is Epiphany on January 6 — also called Three Kings Day or Twelfth Night — which marks the arrival of the Magi at the nativity and is considered the traditional end of the Christmas season in Christian liturgical practice. Some Amish communities observe Epiphany with a church service or family gathering; others acknowledge it as a quiet closing of the Christmas period.

In some conservative Amish communities, Old Christmas — January 6, the date on which Christmas was historically observed before the Gregorian calendar reform — is observed as a second holy day. This is a relatively rare practice today but persists in certain communities as a living connection to the historical Christian calendar.

FAQ: Amish and Christmas

The Bottom Line

So, do Amish celebrate Christmas? Yes — and in many ways more fully and more faithfully to the holiday’s original religious meaning than most Americans do. Amish Christmas is not a diminished or deprived version of the holiday. It is a different celebration entirely, organised around the birth of Jesus Christ, communal worship, family gathering, and the rejection of the commercial and materialistic dimensions that dominate mainstream American December.

The Amish Christmas picture includes things most Americans have never encountered: a three-to-four-hour church service in Pennsylvania Dutch, Second Christmas on December 26, handmade gifts that a child treasures precisely because they are made rather than purchased, a Christmas dinner prepared largely from what the family grew and preserved itself, and a community whose calendar has not been colonised by advertising since October.

What the Amish offer, whether intentionally or not, is a living critique of mainstream American Christmas culture — not a moralistic lecture, but a visible alternative. A community of 370,000 people in North America who celebrate Christmas every year without a Christmas tree, without Santa Claus, without electric lights, and without spending hundreds of dollars per person, and who report deep satisfaction with their celebration, is not evidence that Christmas requires all of those things. It is evidence that Christmas does not.

The theological concept at the heart of Amish Christmas — Gelassenheit, the yielding of individual desire to communal and divine purpose — may be the most counter-cultural idea in American life. In a December saturated with messages that Christmas is about what you want, what you buy, and how it makes you feel, the Amish quietly insist that Christmas is about something else entirely. Whether you share their faith or not, the contrast is worth sitting with.

This article is for informational purposes only. Amish practices vary significantly across communities and affiliations. Information presented here reflects primarily Old Order Amish traditions unless otherwise noted. For the most accurate understanding of specific community practices, consult academic sources on Amish studies such as those published by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College.