The 355th day of the year, the 356th in a leap year
Born on 21 December
In UTC, since 1920, 21 December has been Sagittarius all day in 67 years. In the other 40, the sun moved from Sagittarius into Capricorn during the day, so a birthday then is Sagittarius or Capricorn depending on the hour; the table below gives the moment. Those are UTC days: in 49 more years a crossing on the day before or after fell on 21 December by the clocks somewhere east or west of Greenwich, listed below the table.
- Star sign
- Sagittarius or CapricornThe sun changed sign on this date in 40 of 107 years.
- Birthstone
- Turquoise, Zircon, TanzaniteThe 1912 list gave Turquoise and Lapis lazuli.
- Birth flower
- Narcissus, HollyUsually taken today to mean good wishes and defence.
- Most common weekdays
- Wednesday and Monday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
The December solstice
The December solstice, when the sun enters Capricorn, the shortest day in the north and the longest in the south, fell on 21 December in UTC in 40 years between 1920 and 2026, the first of them 1940, at 23:55 UTC. Since 2008 it has fallen on this date in three years out of four, all but the year before a leap year: at 09:20 UTC in 2024, 15:03 UTC in 2025 and 20:50 UTC in 2026.
In the other 67 years a 21 December birthday was Sagittarius all day, most recently in 2023, when the solstice came at 03:28 UTC on the 22nd. Before 1940 every 21 December birthday was Sagittarius all day in UTC.
The 2026 moment, 20:50 UTC, falls at 22:50 in Johannesburg and 07:50 on 22 December in Sydney, while in New York it is 15:50 on the 21st. A Sydney birth on 21 December 2026 is Sagittarius all day, and a New York birth that evening Capricorn.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 21 December in any year.
Which sign, by year
The sun moves from Sagittarius into Capricorn at an instant that falls about six hours later each year and jumps back most of a day at each leap year. On 21 December that instant has fallen inside the day in 40 years since 1920; those years show the moment, in UTC and to the minute. A birth before it is Sagittarius, after it Capricorn. To read one of these times on your own clock on 21 December, add your time zone's offset east of Greenwich or subtract it to the west, or put the year into the calculator above, which works in your own time zone.
Every year from 1920 to 2026. Where a cell shows a time, the sun entered Capricorn at that moment, UTC. Why the day moves →
Other time zones
A date begins earlier east of Greenwich and later to the west, so in these years the sun changed sign on the day before or after in UTC, at a moment when clocks somewhere on earth already, or still, showed 21 December — worked out from the time zones in use at that moment, as the IANA time zone database records them. A birth there on 21 December that year could be either sign, and the calculator above works it out for your own time zone.
- 1920: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 03:17 UTC
- 1921: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 09:08 UTC
- 1924: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 02:45 UTC
- 1925: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 08:37 UTC
- 1928: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 02:04 UTC
- 1929: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 07:53 UTC
- 1932: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 01:14 UTC
- 1933: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 06:58 UTC
- 1936: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 00:27 UTC
- 1937: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 06:22 UTC
- 1941: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 05:45 UTC
- 1942: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 11:39 UTC
- 1945: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 05:04 UTC
- 1946: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 10:53 UTC
- 1949: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 04:23 UTC
- 1950: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 10:13 UTC
- 1953: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 03:32 UTC
- 1954: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 09:24 UTC
- 1957: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 02:49 UTC
- 1958: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 08:40 UTC
- 1961: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 02:20 UTC
- 1962: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 08:15 UTC
- 1965: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 01:40 UTC
- 1966: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 07:28 UTC
- 1969: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 00:44 UTC
- 1970: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 06:36 UTC
- 1973: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 00:08 UTC
- 1974: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 05:56 UTC
- 1975: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 11:45 UTC
- 1978: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 05:21 UTC
- 1979: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 11:10 UTC
- 1982: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 04:38 UTC
- 1983: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 10:30 UTC
- 1986: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 04:02 UTC
- 1987: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 09:46 UTC
- 1990: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 03:07 UTC
- 1991: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 08:54 UTC
- 1994: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 02:23 UTC
- 1995: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 08:17 UTC
- 1998: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 01:57 UTC
- 1999: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 07:44 UTC
- 2002: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 01:15 UTC
- 2003: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 07:04 UTC
- 2006: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 00:22 UTC
- 2007: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 06:08 UTC
- 2011: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 05:30 UTC
- 2015: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 04:48 UTC
- 2019: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 04:20 UTC
- 2023: the sun entered Capricorn on 22 December, 03:28 UTC
Which weekday 21 December falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 21 December falls on every day of the week: Wednesday 16, Monday 16, Tuesday 15, Thursday 15, Friday 15, Sunday 15, Saturday 15.
Showing 21 December in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 21 December is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,835 babies were born on 21 December in each year of the twenty, making it the 113th most common of the 366 dates, where 26 September came first with 1,974 and 26 December last with 1,359.
Office for National Statistics, How popular is your birthday? Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. What a ranking like this can and cannot say →
Born on 21 December
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Emmanuel Macron | 1977– | President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra since 2017 |
| Benjamin Disraeli | 1804–1881 | British statesman |
| Jane Fonda | 1937– | American actress and activist |
| Hu Jintao | 1942– | former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party |
| Mikheil Saakashvili | 1967– | Georgian and Ukrainian politician, third President of Georgia (2004–2013) and Governor of Odesa Oblast (2015–2016) |
| Heinrich Böll | 1917–1985 | German writer |
| Frank Zappa | 1940–1993 | American musician |
| Samuel L. Jackson | 1948– | American actor |
| Thomas Sankara | 1949–1987 | President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987 |
| Kurt Waldheim | 1918–2007 | Austrian politician and diplomat |
| Masaccio | 1401–1428 | Italian painter |
| Kiefer Sutherland | 1966– | British-Canadian actor |
| Leopold von Ranke | 1795–1886 | German historian and founder of modern source-based history |
| Chris Evert | 1954– | American former tennis player |
| Konstantin Rokossovsky | 1896–1968 | Soviet and Polish military commander |
| Paco de Lucía | 1947–2014 | Spanish flamenco, classical, jazz guitarist & musician |
| Julie Delpy | 1969– | French and American actress, director, screenwriter and singer |
| Hermann Joseph Muller | 1890–1967 | American biologist |
Died on 21 December
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Giovanni Boccaccio | 1313–1375 | Italian author and poet |
| F. Scott Fitzgerald | 1896–1940 | American writer |
| Saparmurat Niyazov | 1940–2006 | President of Turkmenistan from 1990 to 2006 |
| George S. Patton | 1885–1945 | United States Army general |
| Marguerite de Navarre | 1492–1549 | queen consort of Navarre |
| Lion Feuchtwanger | 1884–1958 | German writer |
| Nikolaas Tinbergen | 1907–1988 | Dutch biologist and ornithologist |
| Frank B. Kellogg | 1856–1937 | American politician |
| Udo Jürgens | 1934–2014 | Austrian singer and composer |
| Kurt Tucholsky | 1890–1935 | Jewish-German journalist, satirist and writer |
| Edwin G. Krebs | 1918–2009 | American biochemist |
| Enzo Bearzot | 1927–2010 | Italian football player and manager |
Names are the titles of the English Wikipedia articles; years and the short descriptions are from Wikidata, which publishes under CC0, checked and corrected by hand where they needed it, and nothing is said about anybody beyond that. Ask for a removal.