You’ve heard of the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” If the NBA had its way, you’d be getting the 12 Games of Christmas, beginning with a 6 a.m. (ET) tip-off at The O2 in London.

As it is, five games are on the menu this Christmas, starting at noon:

• Cleveland Cavaliers at New York Knicks, noon

• San Antonio Spurs at Oklahoma City Thunder, 2:30 p.m.

• Dallas Mavericks at Golden State Warriors, 5 p.m.

• Houston Rockets at Los Angeles Lakers, 8 p.m.

• Minnesota Timberwolves at Denver Nuggets, 10:30 p.m.

That’s a lot of basketball. In fact, it’s too much basketball. There. Said it. Now, if this ok-boomer, get-off-my-lawn, old-man-yelling-at-cloud, life-was-better-when-we-had-rotary-telephones hot sports take bothers you in any way, you’re invited to stop reading. Just move on to the comments section and proceed with the butchery. Or you can hear me out.

The mission here isn’t to tell a story about The True Meaning of Christmas. The holiday means many things to many people, from religious services to Yankee swaps. But a common theme has been mostly in place for a long, long time: Families gather. It’s the way my parents raised my brothers, my sister and me, and, so go the stories, it’s the way my parents were raised by their respective immigrant parents. (And do I really need to tell you about all the Jewish families who gather for Chinese food on Christmas? Just got off the phone with a couple of friends who assured me that’s a thing. And then there’s my friend J.D., whose Jewish Christmas tradition is to take the family to Puerto Rico.)

Never mind watching the games. Think of all the people working the games. As it is, we already have hundreds of thousands of people working on Christmas Day, providing public safety, transportation, food delivery and many other services. Now add the vendors, drivers, ushers, production crews and media outlets that’ll be working all these games. We’re getting ever closer to Christmas being reduced to just another event day instead of a religious observation or a day to spend time with family.

There’s something reassuring about Christmas and its sentimental reminders about where we’re from. It also offers hints as to what’s ahead. Just as I can close my eyes and summon fuzzy Christmas memories of my grandparents, I can listen and watch as my great nieces and nephews talk excitedly about their many activities, which naturally involve lots of sports, from football and water polo to soccer and equestrian.

The problem isn’t that the NBA is scheduling games on Christmas. The problem is that it’s all day and all night on Christmas, and asking viewers to come along for the ride. In that spirit, then, there’s really no Christmas spirit at all. It’s using the day as strictly a marketing platform, as ore to be mined. You know who agrees with this viewpoint? LeBron James, that’s who. King James will be playing in his 20th Christmas game on Thursday, and he is OK with that. But Daddy James is tired of it. “I’d much rather be home with my family,” LeBron told a group of reporters earlier this week.

LeBron went on to say, “But I mean, it’s the game. It’s the game I love. It’s a game I watched when I was a kid on Christmas Day, watching a lot of the greatest play the game on Christmas, it’s always been an honor to play it. Obviously, I’m gonna be completely honest, I would like to be home on the couch with my family all throughout the day. But my number is called, our number is called, we have to go out and perform, and I look forward to it.”

LeBron James on playing his NBA-record 20th Christmas Day game this week:

“I’d much rather be at home with my family. But I mean, it’s the game, it’s the game that I love. It’s a game I watched when I was a kid on Christmas Day, watching a lot of the greatest play the game on… pic.twitter.com/lo85glVwPk

— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) December 22, 2025

To be fair, Christmas is a tradition in the NBA. As far back as 1947, the Basketball Association of America (which would soon merge with the National Basketball League to form the NBA) played three games on Christmas. Not only did the world not come to an end, but the world, at least parts of the world where the games were played, got a kick out of it. At Madison Square Garden III, a league-high crowd of 15,427 turned out to see Colgate smoothie Carl Braun (as Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News called him) and Seton Hall’s Tommy Byrnes combine for 39 points to lead the Knicks to an 89-75 victory over the Providence Steamrollers.

Meanwhile, at the Baltimore Coliseum, the hometown Bullets coasted to an 87-70 victory over the Chicago Stags. How festive was the atmosphere? “Santa Claus was kind to basketball referees,” wrote The Baltimore Sun’s Jesse A. Linthicum in his “Sunlight on Sports” column. “He brought them new whistles and how those babies tooted last night at the Coliseum! They made more noise than an entire neighborhood of kids with drums, horns, whistles and cowbells.”

In the third Christmas game from 1947, the Washington Capitols registered a 73-56 victory over the St. Louis Bombers at St. Louis Arena. Just 3,671 fans turned out for that one.

If the NBA wants to claim territorial/traditional Christmas rights, fine. And the Knicks will be playing their 58th Christmas game. It’s awesome to consider that there are likely plenty of kids who’ll be at MSG with parents who went to Knicks games on Christmas with their parents. Congrats to those who’ve made that a family tradition.

But if you’re a diehard Knicks fan whose Christmas time with the family involves a trip to MSG, it probably means you weren’t sitting around all day watching the other games. As for those three Christmas games in 1947, they weren’t televised back-to-back-to-back on national television, with the whiz kids from the Basketball Association of America getting inside your head and encouraging you to watch ’em all. (If you lived in Washington, D.C., in 1947 and were one of the few people lucky enough to own a television set, “Miracle on Main Street” was showing on WMAL-TV on Christmas night.)

It’s not just the NBA that’s taking bigger bites out of Christmas. The NFL has played games on Christmas Day and even Christmas Eve. If the NFL could get away with it, the Philadelphia Eagles would be the home team in an annual Christmas Day game played in Bethlehem. As in the Bethlehem just south of Jerusalem, not the one in Lehigh Valley about 70 miles north of Philly.

A full day of football on Christmas 🎄 pic.twitter.com/sYHGjxpE5D

— NFL (@NFL) December 22, 2025

Sports are fun. Sports make history. Sports contribute to the betterment of society. But sports should take a step back now and then and let us all breathe a little. Christmas should be one of those days. The NBA can do its Knicks game, because that’s a thing. And poor LeBron can keep playing on Christmas until he’s 90, because that, too, is a thing. All the other teams in all the other sports need to chill.

And if I turn on the TV, I’d rather watch the kids from Peanuts transform a tired, stooped-over twig into a magnificent Christmas tree.

I’d rather watch joyful, thankful George Bailey darting through downtown Bedford Falls while hollering, “Merry Christmas, you wonderful old Building & Loan!”

And I’d rather watch the look of horror on Miss Shields’ face when she looks out the window and discovers that Flick’s tongue is stuck to a frozen flagpole.

I could also watch “The Godfather,” which has been a Christmas Day staple at my house for decades.