How many days until Christmas Eve?

Christmas Eve is 24 December, and this countdown runs to the start of it rather than to the evening. In the Emirates the date has no official standing at all — it is a working day, the metro runs on its usual timetable, and government service centres open and close as they would on any other Thursday or Monday.

What does happen is domestic and expatriate rather than national. Carol services fill the church compounds, restaurants run set menus that have been arranged weeks ahead, and a large share of the residential population is either travelling or has already travelled: the airport handles one of its heaviest weeks of the year around now, with the outbound flow starting several days before the date and the roads to the terminals slower than usual through the evening.

For families who mark it, the evening is the part that matters, which is worth remembering when setting a countdown: this one ends at midnight as the 24th begins, so if you are counting to the meal rather than to the date, the custom countdown on this site will land closer to what you actually mean.

Because the date is fixed, the interval never varies from year to year in the way the lunar holidays here do — the same 24 December arrives in the same place on the Gregorian calendar every time.