when did the nfl start playing on christmas day

The National Football League (NFL) has a long history of playing games on Christmas Day. The first Christmas Day game was played in 1962, when the New York Giants hosted the Dallas Cowboys at Yankee Stadium. Since then, the NFL has continued to schedule games on Christmas Day, with the most recent being in 2022 when the Kansas City Chiefs played the Denver Broncos in a Sunday night game. While not every Christmas Day has featured an NFL game, the league has made it a tradition to schedule at least one game per season on this special day.