The 356th day of the year, the 357th in a leap year
Born on 22 December
In UTC, since 1920, 22 December has been Capricorn all day in 40 years. In the other 67, 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 39 more years a crossing on the day before or after fell on 22 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 67 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
- Thursday and Tuesday16 times each between 1920 and 2026.
The solstice's old date
22 December was the usual date of the December solstice for most of the twentieth century: the sun entered Capricorn on it, in UTC, in every year from 1920 to 1939 and in 67 years in all. The latest was 20:54 UTC in 1923, the most recent 03:28 UTC in 2023.
It now reaches this date only in the year before a leap year, and earlier each time: 05:30 UTC in 2011, 04:48 UTC in 2015, 04:20 UTC in 2019 and 03:28 UTC in 2023. In the other years the solstice comes on the 21st, and a 22 December birthday is Capricorn from its first minute, as it was in 40 years of the period.
For a birth on 22 December 2023, the 03:28 UTC moment was 05:28 in Johannesburg and 14:28 in Sydney, and in New York it was still 21 December, at 22:28. Printed tables begin Capricorn on 22 December, and on this date they are right far more often than not.
Your year
Without JavaScript, the pages for each birth year give the generation and Chinese animal for a birth on 22 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 22 December that instant has fallen inside the day in 67 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 22 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 22 December — worked out from the time zones in use at that moment, as the IANA time zone database records them. A birth there on 22 December that year could be either sign, and the calculator above works it out for your own time zone.
- 1940: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 23:55 UTC
- 1944: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 23:15 UTC
- 1948: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 22:33 UTC
- 1952: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 21:43 UTC
- 1956: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 21:00 UTC
- 1960: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 20:26 UTC
- 1964: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 19:50 UTC
- 1968: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 19:00 UTC
- 1972: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 18:13 UTC
- 1976: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 17:35 UTC
- 1977: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 23:23 UTC
- 1980: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 16:56 UTC
- 1981: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 22:51 UTC
- 1984: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 16:23 UTC
- 1985: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 22:08 UTC
- 1988: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 15:28 UTC
- 1989: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 21:22 UTC
- 1992: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 14:43 UTC
- 1993: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 20:26 UTC
- 1996: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 14:06 UTC
- 1997: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 20:07 UTC
- 2000: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 13:38 UTC
- 2001: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 19:22 UTC
- 2004: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 12:42 UTC
- 2005: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 18:35 UTC
- 2008: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 12:04 UTC
- 2009: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 17:47 UTC
- 2010: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 23:38 UTC
- 2012: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 11:12 UTC
- 2013: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 17:11 UTC
- 2014: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 23:03 UTC
- 2016: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 10:44 UTC
- 2017: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 16:28 UTC
- 2018: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 22:22 UTC
- 2020: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 10:03 UTC
- 2021: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 15:59 UTC
- 2022: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 21:48 UTC
- 2025: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 15:03 UTC
- 2026: the sun entered Capricorn on 21 December, 20:50 UTC
Which weekday 22 December falls on
Across the 107 years from 1920 to 2026, 22 December falls on every day of the week: Thursday 16, Tuesday 16, Wednesday 15, Friday 15, Saturday 15, Monday 15, Sunday 15.
Showing 22 December in the 36 most recent years. Every weekday →
How common a birthday 22 December is
In England and Wales, from 1995 to 2014, an average of 1,829 babies were born on 22 December in each year of the twenty, making it the 135th 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 22 December
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Basshunter | 1984– | Swedish singer, record producer, and DJ |
| Giacomo Puccini | 1858–1924 | Italian opera composer |
| Jean Racine | 1639–1699 | French dramatist |
| Srinivasa Ramanujan | 1887–1920 | Indian mathematician |
| Diocletian | 244–311 | Roman emperor from 284 to 305; 22 December was his official birthday; the year is an estimate, between 242 and 245 |
| Joshua Bassett | 2000– | American actor and singer-songwriter |
| Ralph Fiennes | 1962– | English actor, director and producer |
| Vanessa Paradis | 1972– | French singer, model and actress |
| Guru Gobind Singh | 1666–1708 | tenth Sikh guru |
| Ted Cruz | 1970– | American politician |
| Filippo Tommaso Marinetti | 1876–1944 | Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement |
| Chagatai Khan | 1183–1242 | second son of Genghis Khan and Börte |
| Lady Bird Johnson | 1912–2007 | First Lady of the United States from 1963 to 1969 |
| Frank B. Kellogg | 1856–1937 | American politician |
| Thomas C. Südhof | 1955– | German biochemist |
| Jean-Michel Basquiat | 1960–1988 | American artist |
| Meghan Trainor | 1993– | American singer-songwriter |
| Raphaël Guerreiro | 1993– | French-Portuguese footballer |
Died on 22 December
| Name | Years | Known for |
|---|---|---|
| Samuel Beckett | 1906–1989 | Irish writer |
| George Eliot | 1819–1880 | English novelist, essayist, poet and journalist |
| Beatrix Potter | 1866–1943 | British children's writer and illustrator |
| Joe Cocker | 1944–2014 | British singer |
| Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer | 1836–1870 | Spanish poet |
| Mehmed III | 1566–1603 | Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from 1595 to 1603 |
| Chris Rea | 1951–2025 | English singer-songwriter and guitarist |
| William Hyde Wollaston | 1766–1828 | English chemist and physicist |
| James Meade | 1907–1995 | British economist |
| Jean-Victor Poncelet | 1788–1867 | French engineer and mathematician |
| Darryl F. Zanuck | 1902–1979 | American film producer |
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.