Little Christmas in Ireland: Nollaig na mBan and the Women’s Days Like It Around the World

Nollaig na mBan is a day I’m always drawn back to. What fascinates me most is that Ireland isn’t alone. In villages in northern Greece, in a hilltop town in Spain and in the carnival towns of the Rhineland, communities have kept their own days when women are honoured, take charge, or simply get the day off. They grew up separately, yet they look remarkably alike. My encounter with this day few years ago was in Donegal when a group of women friends invited me to an Afternoon Tea event to celebrate “Women’s Christmas”.

Nollaig na mBan: Fast Facts

This guide covers where the day came from, the old folklore, what women actually do now, the food, and those sister traditions around the world. For the rest of the Irish Christmas calendar, see our guide to Irish Christmas traditions, and if you’re visiting over the season, Christmas in Ireland.

What Is Nollaig na mBan?

Nollaig na mBan is the Irish name for 6 January, the twelfth and final day of Christmas. For generations of Irish women, Christmas meant weeks of saving, baking, cooking and cleaning for large families. On this last day, the work was over. Women visited their female neighbours, sisters and mothers for tea and the last of the Christmas cake, while the men and boys stayed home and, for once, did the housework.

Folklorist Marion McGarry has described the custom as surprisingly feminist for its time. It recognised women’s unpaid labour and rewarded it, even if only for a day, in rural communities where gender roles were rigid.

When Is Nollaig na mBan 2027?

Nollaig na mBan is always on 6 January. Because that’s often a working day, many women hold their gathering on the nearest weekend instead.

Why Is 6 January Called Little Christmas?

Three strands of history meet on this date.

• The twelve days. The Council of Tours in 567 set the twelve days of Christmas, from 25 December to the Epiphany. Each day was linked to a month of the year, which is why so much folklore about the coming year gathers around them.
• The Epiphany. 6 January marks the arrival of the Three Kings, or Magi, at the crib. In Irish they’re an Triúr Saoithe.
• The calendar change. When Britain and Ireland moved from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, eleven days were dropped. Many people, especially older people in the countryside, kept to the old reckoning, so their “Old” or “Little” Christmas landed later and merged with Twelfth Night and the Epiphany.

In Irish, the day is also called Nollaig Bheag, Little Christmas. Nollaig na mBan, Women’s Christmas, is the name that stuck in Munster.

The History of Women’s Little Christmas

Nobody knows exactly when Nollaig na mBan began. It was passed down by word of mouth among women rather than written down, and folklorists say it’s very hard to trace. What we do know is that it has been celebrated since at least the late 19th century, mainly in Counties Cork and Kerry.

Women’s money mattered here. In rural Ireland, the egg, butter and poultry money was often the woman’s own, and the turkeys and geese sold before Christmas helped pay for the rich ingredients of puddings and cakes. Many households made three puddings, keeping one back for Women’s Christmas. A 1938 account from Dubhghlas, County Kerry, describes women going into the big town to collect their “Christmas Box”.

Not everyone welcomed it. Folklorist Shane Lehane heard of a Kerry man who called the day “Nollaig gan mhaith”, No Good Christmas. In Cork city, the joke went that the only man out on Women’s Christmas was the bishop.

By the mid-20th century, the custom had largely faded outside the south-west. Historian Mary McAuliffe has recalled that when she moved to Dublin as a student in the 1990s, hardly anyone there had heard of it. Over roughly the last 20 years it has come back strongly, and it’s now marked across the whole country.

Old Customs and Folklore of Nollaig na mBan

In the 1930s, schoolchildren across Ireland collected folklore from their families for the Schools’ Collection, now online at dúchas.ie. Their accounts of Little Christmas are some of the best records we have.

Twelve Candle Night

Children gathered rushes, peeled them and dipped the pith in tallow to make rushlights. Twelve were pressed into a cake of ashes and cow dung, each named for an apostle or for a member of the household. The family knelt to say the Rosary and watched the candles. Whoever’s candle burned out first was said to be the first to die; the longest-burning would live longest. Accounts come from Clonmacnoise in Offaly, Abbeycarron in Roscommon and Gallagh in Galway. The cake was kept afterwards for luck and was sometimes placed under the cows’ heads on 1 May to keep disease away.

Water turning into wine

It was believed that at midnight on Little Christmas Eve, the water in the well turned to wine. Going to look was very bad luck, so families drew an extra bucket the evening before. An account from Killorglin, County Kerry, tells of men who waited at the well to see the change and were never seen again. Stories like that kept people at home.

Feasting, candles and holly

• In Crookhaven, County Cork, the day was known as “Little Christmas day or the Women’s Christmas”, with feasting and merrymaking.
• In Kilkishen, County Clare, three candles were lit in the kitchen to honour the Magi, and weddings waited until after the feast.
• In Castlejordan, County Meath, the leftover plum pudding was finished that night, and the holly and ivy were burned the next day.
• Epiphany also marked the start of the courting season, so the women’s gatherings were a fine time for gossip about who might be making a match.

Taking down the decorations

Little Christmas is the traditional day to take down the decorations, and many Irish households still won’t leave them up a day longer, because doing so is thought to be bad luck. Where a house had little more than a sprig of holly, it went on the fire.

How Nollaig na mBan Is Celebrated Today

Today the day belongs to women of every age and background, married or single. Typical ways to mark it:

• Lunch, afternoon tea or dinner with sisters, mothers, daughters and friends. Hotels and restaurants, especially in Cork and Kerry, take big group bookings, so book early.
• A night out. One County Cork woman told National Geographic about her plans for 2026: dinner for 39 women friends, a pub disco afterwards, and the husbands collecting everyone at the end of the night.
• The Women’s Aid Cold Swim for Women. Around Nollaig na mBan, people swim in the sea or a lake, alone or in groups, to raise money for women experiencing domestic violence and abuse. More than 2,400 women swam in 2024, and Women’s Aid has since expected as many as 5,000 to take part. In January 2025, one Laois woman swam almost a kilometre at the Forty Foot in Sandycove in an 8°C sea. You can register on the Women’s Aid website.
• Talks, readings and festivals. In 2025 the Irish Writers Centre held an evening of women writers at Pearse Street Library in Dublin; north Dublin’s Ballybough, Clonliffe and North Strand held a day-long festival honouring local women, with Olympic champion Kellie Harrington; and Cabragh Wetlands near Holycross in Tipperary hosted talks and workshops.
• Campaigning. The National Women’s Council uses the day to draw attention to issues such as domestic violence and childcare.

If you’re visiting Ireland in early January, Cork and Kerry are where you’ll feel Nollaig na mBan most. See our guide to the best things to do in Kerry.

What Women Eat and Drink on Little Christmas

I’ve spent more than 30 years in food, developing products and dishes for producers and restaurants, and what I love about the Nollaig na mBan table is that it was never about cooking something new. The whole point was that the women weren’t cooking. It was about finally sitting down to enjoy what they’d made.

• Tea and Christmas cake, the heart of the old gatherings.
• The saved pudding. The last of the plum pudding, often a whole one kept back for the night.
• Sherry, madeira or hot punch for the grown-ups.
• Spiced beef, a Cork Christmas speciality, cured with spices and served cold in thin slices.
• The last of the ham and turkey, in sandwiches. Goose was the traditional Christmas meat in many homes.

Personally I create an approximation of a High Tea which is tiny little sandwiches and all sorts of cakes and pastries with Cava the bubble most drunk in Europe.

How to Celebrate Your Own Nollaig na mBan, Wherever You Live

1. Gather the women in your life: mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, friends, neighbours. Include women who might be on their own that week.
2. Let someone else cook. Book a lunch or afternoon tea, or ask the men in the house to take over for the day.
3. Put out the last of the Christmas cake, or bake a barmbrack or scones, with tea and a glass of sherry.
4. Share stories of the women who came before you, a grandmother’s recipe or a mother’s saying.
5. Light three candles for the Magi, or twelve for the old Twelve Candle Night (best without the omens).
6. Do something for other women: a donation, a sponsored swim, or a call to someone who needs it.

To wish someone a happy Women’s Christmas in Irish, say “Nollaig na mBan shona duit” (NULL-ig na MON HUN-a dit), or “Nollaig na mBan shona daoibh” (HUN-a DEE-iv) to a group.

Women’s Days Like Nollaig na mBan Around the World

This is the part that fascinates me. Communities that never met each other have created strikingly similar days, when for 24 hours the usual order is turned upside down. Women take over the village, men do the housework, and women’s work and friendship are put at the centre.

Gynaikokratia, Greece: Women Rule the Village (8 January)

Two days after Nollaig na mBan, the women of Monokklisia and Nea Petra, near Serres in northern Greece, take over. Gynaikokratia means “women’s rule”. The custom came with Thracian settlers to the region. Married women are handed the keys of the town, elect a chairwoman, and spend the day dancing, drinking and parading through the streets with music. They visit the village’s oldest woman, honoured as “Babo”, to bring her gifts and receive her blessing. The men stay home and keep house. A man caught out in the streets can be chased and splashed with water, and male politicians who attend have to wear a scarf and an apron. Of all the traditions here, it’s the one closest to Nollaig na mBan, in timing and in spirit.

Babinden, Bulgaria: Midwives’ Day (21 January)

Babinden falls on 8 January in the old Julian calendar, which is 21 January today. It honours the village midwife, the baba. Women who gave birth that year bring her food, wine and gifts, she bathes and blesses the babies, and in some areas the women ritually bathe the midwife herself. Men are kept out of the first part of the day and only join after the women have eaten.

Weiberfastnacht, Germany: The Women’s Carnival

On the Thursday before Ash Wednesday, women in Bonn, Cologne and across the Rhineland take over carnival. The story begins in Beuel, across the Rhine from Bonn, where many women worked as washerwomen for wealthy families. In 1824, fed up with being left at home while their husbands enjoyed carnival, they met over coffee and formed their own women’s committee. Today women storm town halls and snip off men’s ties with scissors, often described as a symbolic cut to male authority.

Santa Águeda in Zamarramala, Spain: The Women Mayors

In Zamarramala, a village beside Segovia, women take over for Santa Águeda’s feast on 5 February, moved to the following weekend when it falls midweek. Two alcaldesas, women mayors, are chosen, and the mayor of Segovia hands them the wooden staff of office. Legend says the women earned their privileges in 1227 by helping to retake Segovia’s Alcázar, though historians treat the date with caution. The women dress in elaborate traditional costumes that can take two hours to put on, and the day ends with the burning of the pelele, a straw man representing their daily burdens. Since 1969 they’ve awarded the Matahombres de Oro, the “golden man-killer”, a gold pin recalling the pins women once used to defend themselves, to people who support women’s causes. Spain declared the festival of National Tourist Interest in 1972.

Les Comadres, Asturias, Spain

In Asturias, the Thursday before Carnival is Jueves de Comadres. Women in Pola de Siero, Oviedo, Gijón, Avilés and Langreo gather for picnics and long lunches built around bollu preñáu, bread baked with chorizo inside, washed down with Asturian cider. It’s a celebration of female friendship, and some trace it back to Roman festivals honouring women.

Konudagur and the Women’s Day Off, Iceland

Iceland has two women’s days. Konudagur, Women’s Day, falls on the first day of Góa, an old Norse winter month, in late February. Husbands are expected to give their wives flowers or gifts, a custom dating from the 1950s, and baking special cakes is an older tradition.

The second is the one that went further. On 24 October 1975, about 90 percent of Icelandic women took part in a nationwide stoppage, walking out of paid jobs and leaving the cooking and childcare to the men. They called it Kvennafrídagurinn, the Women’s Day Off, and around 25,000 women filled central Reykjavík. Iceland passed an equal rights law the next year, and in 1980 Vigdís Finnbogadóttir became the first woman in the world to be democratically elected president. Women struck again for the 50th anniversary on 24 October 2025. It’s Nollaig na mBan’s idea, a day when women’s work stops, turned into a protest.

The Matronalia, Ancient Rome (1 March)

On 1 March, Roman wives and mothers were honoured at the Matronalia, the festival of Juno Lucina, goddess of childbirth. Husbands gave their wives gifts and prayed for them, and daughters gave gifts to their mothers. It’s one of the oldest recorded days of its kind, more than 2,000 years old.

Festa della Donna, Italy (8 March)

Italy marks International Women’s Day with sprigs of yellow mimosa. Politician Teresa Mattei chose the flower in 1946 because it bloomed in early March and was cheap enough for poor and rural families, unlike the violets used in France.

Attukal Pongala, Kerala, India

In Thiruvananthapuram, millions of women gather in the streets around the Attukal temple each February or March to cook pongala, a sweet rice offering, in clay pots for the goddess. Guinness World Records has recognised it as the largest gathering of women for a religious activity.

“Women’s Christmas” in the United States

The Irish custom has travelled too. In the United States, artist and writer Jan Richardson has helped popularise 6 January as “Women’s Christmas”, a day of retreat and reflection for women at the end of the holidays. Churches and women’s groups now hold Women’s Christmas retreats. I’ve been to several events in Canada where women got together on the 6th.

What these days have in common

Anthropologists call these rituals of reversal: a fixed day when the normal order is turned upside down, then put back again. Almost all of them recognise women’s unpaid work and women’s friendship. Many fall in the dark weeks of January and February, after the work of the winter festivals is done. And almost all are about women together, not women alone.

It’s worth being honest, too. A single day off was never equality, and some of the women who started these customs would have been the first to say so. What I find moving is that, from Kerry to Thrace, women carved out the day for themselves. And in Iceland in 1975, they showed what happens when the day off isn’t granted but taken.

6 January Around the World: Epiphany and Little Christmas Traditions

Nollaig na mBan is unusual because it’s about women. Most 6 January customs elsewhere celebrate the Three Kings, gift-giving or the end of the season instead.

• Spain: Día de los Reyes Magos, with parades on the 5th and presents for children on the 6th. See Christmas in Spain.
• France: l’Épiphanie and the galette des rois. Whoever finds the hidden charm is crowned for the day. See French Christmas traditions.
• Italy: La Befana, a kindly old woman on a broomstick, brings sweets to good children on the night of 5 January, and coal to the naughty ones. She’s the rare female gift-bringer.
• Newfoundland: Old Christmas Day on 6 January, with twelfth cake, mummering and the legend that animals talk at midnight.
• Scottish Highlands: Nollaig Bheag, Little Christmas, is New Year’s Day. The Epiphany is Là Féill nan Rìgh, the Feast of the Kings.
• Denmark and Norway: “Little Christmas Eve” is 23 December, the night before their main celebration.
• Ukraine: Malanka, on 13 January, rings in the Old New Year. Despite the name, it isn’t a women’s day: Malanka is played by a young man dressed as a woman, leading a troupe of mummers from house to house.

For more, see Christmas around the world and how Europeans celebrate Christmas.

From Nollaig na mBan to St Brigid’s Day

Nollaig na mBan isn’t Ireland’s only day for women. Four weeks later comes St Brigid’s Day on 1 February, the old festival of Imbolc and the start of spring. In 2023, Ireland made it a public holiday, the first in the country named after a woman, held on the first Monday in February (or on 1 February when that falls on a Friday). I’ve celebrated Imbolc and made my own Brigid’s cross from rushes, and I love that the two days sit so close together: one closing the winter festivals, the other opening the spring.

For more Irish customs, see our Irish Culture and Folklore guide.

Frequently Asked Questions About Nollaig na mBan

What is Nollaig na mBan?

Nollaig na mBan, Irish for ‘Women’s Christmas’, is an Irish tradition held on 6 January, the last day of the Christmas season and the Feast of the Epiphany. Traditionally, women who had done most of the work of Christmas took the day off to gather with female friends and relatives for tea, cake or a drink, while the men took over the housework. It is also called Little Christmas or Women’s Little Christmas.

When is Nollaig na mBan 2027?

Nollaig na mBan is always on 6 January. In 2027 it falls on Wednesday 6 January, so many women will also celebrate on the weekend before or after. It falls on Thursday 6 January in 2028 and Saturday 6 January in 2029.

How do you pronounce Nollaig na mBan?

Say it roughly as ‘NULL-ig na MON’. The ‘b’ in mBan is silent, because the Irish grammar after ‘na’ turns the ‘b’ into an ‘m’ sound, and ‘Ban’ rhymes with ‘gone’.

Why is 6 January called Little Christmas?

6 January is the Feast of the Epiphany, the twelfth and last day of Christmas. When Britain and Ireland switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, eleven days were dropped, and people who kept to the old reckoning marked Christmas later. That ‘Old’ or ‘Little’ Christmas merged with Twelfth Night and the Epiphany on 6 January.

What do women do on Nollaig na mBan?

Traditionally, women visited female neighbours and relatives for tea, Christmas cake and sometimes sherry or punch, while men and boys did the cooking, cleaning and childminding for the day. Today women meet for lunch, afternoon tea, dinner or drinks, and thousands take part in cold sea swims and other events that raise money for women’s charities such as Women’s Aid.

Where in Ireland is Women’s Christmas celebrated most?

The tradition is strongest in Cork and Kerry in the south-west, where it has been recorded since at least the late 19th century and never fully died out. Since the early 2000s it has spread nationally, with events in Dublin, Tipperary, Waterford and across the country.

What food is eaten on Little Christmas?

There is no single fixed dish. Women traditionally shared tea with Christmas cake and the last of the plum pudding, which many households kept back specially for the night, sometimes with sherry, madeira or punch. Goose was a traditional meat, and in Cork spiced beef is a Christmas favourite. Today it is usually a meal out or an afternoon tea.

Do you take Christmas decorations down on 6 January in Ireland?

Yes. In Irish tradition the Christmas decorations come down on 6 January or the day after, and keeping them up beyond the twelve days is considered bad luck. In the past, the holly that decorated the house was burned on the fire.

Is Nollaig na mBan a public holiday in Ireland?

No. Nollaig na mBan is not a public holiday, so shops, schools and workplaces are open as normal. Ireland’s first public holiday named after a woman is St Brigid’s Day, introduced in 2023 and held on the first Monday in February, or on 1 February when that falls on a Friday.

Are there women’s days like Nollaig na mBan in other countries?

Yes. The closest is Gynaikokratia, ‘women’s rule’, in villages around Serres in northern Greece on 8 January, when women take over the village and men stay home. Others include Babinden in Bulgaria, Weiberfastnacht in Germany’s Rhineland, the women mayors of Zamarramala in Spain on Santa Águeda’s Day, Les Comadres in Asturias, Konudagur in Iceland and the ancient Roman Matronalia.

What is the Women’s Aid Cold Swim for Women?

It is a fundraiser held around Nollaig na mBan in which people take a cold sea or lake swim, alone or in groups, to raise money for Women’s Aid, the Irish charity supporting women experiencing domestic violence and abuse. More than 2,400 women swam in 2024, and Women’s Aid has since expected as many as 5,000 participants. Registration is on the Women’s Aid website.

How do you say happy Women’s Christmas in Irish?

You can say ‘Nollaig na mBan shona duit’ (NULL-ig na MON HUN-a dit) to one person, or ‘Nollaig na mBan shona daoibh’ (HUN-a DEE-iv) to a group. Shona means happy, as in the Christmas greeting Nollaig shona duit.

My Thoughts on Nollaig na mBan

Nollaig na mBan began as a quiet thank-you to the women who made Christmas happen, in a country that didn’t often say thank you to them. It almost disappeared, and it came back because women wanted it. Today it’s a lunch, a cold swim, a pub full of laughing women, or simply a pot of tea with your sister. And it belongs to a much bigger family of days, from Greece to Iceland, when women have claimed a little space of their own. However you mark it, Nollaig na mBan shona duit.