Is It Christmas? The Web's Most Reliable Answer to One Question

Is It Christmas? answers one question. It answers it instantly, it answers it in a font roughly the size of your monitor, and it has been right every single day since it launched.

For three hundred and sixty-four days a year, the answer is NO.

What is Is It Christmas?

The site is the purest example of a form the web invented and then largely forgot: the single-serving site. One domain, one question, one answer, no second page. In the late 2000s these things multiplied like weeds, because a domain was cheap and the joke of registering an entire address for one gag had not yet worn off.

Most of them are gone. Is It Christmas? is still up, still loading in under a second, and still shouting NO at everybody who visits in March.

The execution is what elevates it. The word fills the screen. There is no header, no explanation, no “about this project”, no small print acknowledging that Christmas falls on different days for different traditions. It does not hedge, it does not offer a countdown as a consolation prize, and it does not try to keep you on the page. You asked, it answered, you may leave.

And then once a year the site does the only thing it can do, and says YES. That is a genuinely funny payoff for a website that has spent twelve months being curt with people, and it is the reason it has survived. The joke has an annual event built into it. Every December the link goes round again, because for one day the site is a different website.

Underneath, it is a small open source project, which is why it speaks a long list of languages. Contributors have translated the answer into everything from the obvious European options to things nobody asked for, and you can switch between them. A page whose entire content is one word has, absurdly, an internationalization story.

It also does the one clever technical thing it needs to do: it reads the date from your own machine, so the answer flips when December 25 arrives where you are, not where a server is. If your system clock is wrong, the site will confidently lie to you, and you will deserve it.

There is a whole small genre in this shape, sites that answer yes-or-no questions with total confidence, and Is It Christmas? is the one that got the tone exactly right. It is not sarcastic. It is not cute. It is a website that has been asked something and is simply telling you.

What can you do with Is It Christmas?

• Find out if it is Christmas. Confirmed accurate, all year, in one glance.
• Read the answer in another language. The translations are the site’s one hidden feature and they are genuinely extensive.
• Send it to someone in July. The NO is much funnier the further you are from December.
• Visit on December 25. The payoff is the point, and it lasts exactly one day.
• Check the source. It is an open project, so you can go and see how much code it takes to say NO properly.
• Use it as a settling device. Any argument about what day it is can be ended here, provided the argument is about Christmas.

Tips to get the most out of it

Bookmark it now, in August. The site is at its best when you have forgotten you saved it and stumble across the bookmark at a completely unfestive time of year.

Send it as a reply, never as a message. Someone mentions Christmas shopping in September, you post the link, you say nothing. The site does all the work.

Try the language switcher. Getting the answer in a language you cannot read is somehow funnier than getting it in one you can, because the word is still obviously NO.

Check your clock before you complain. The answer comes from your device. Every report that the site is broken has, historically, turned out to be a time zone.

Diary the payoff. Set a reminder for December 25 to open it. It is the only day the page is a completely different experience, and the whole run of NOs exists to set it up.

If you like Is It Christmas?, also try…

• Is It Friday Yet?: the same idea, applied to a question you ask far more often.
• Down For Everyone Or Just Me: one question, one answer, and genuinely useful.
• What Time Is It Right Now: a site that answers the most basic question on the internet, in the most literal way.
• Unicode Snowman For You: a domain registered to deliver one seasonal character, and nothing more.

More gloriously minimal websites in Weird & Wonderful, and a stack of pages that actually do something in Tools & Utilities.