Holiday Coloring Pages

From the New Year's countdown to the last Christmas stocking, the calendar is full of dates that children want to color. Our free holiday coloring pages give each date its own collection, so a Thanksgiving turkey never gets lost among Halloween bats, and the printable PDFs are ready weeks before the date.

What this page gathers:

• Winter holidays: Christmas, Santa, gingerbread, snowmen, the Elf on the Shelf and New Year's Eve.
• Spring holidays: Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter and Mother's Day.
• Summer holidays: Father's Day, graduation and the Fourth of July.
• Fall holidays: Halloween, pumpkins, ghosts, the Day of the Dead, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving.
• Any day of the year: birthdays, hearts, bows and friendship.

The grid above mixes sheets from all of them. To go straight to one holiday, pick it from the list:

• Christmas Coloring Pages: Slow December afternoons at home call for Santa with his sack of toys and stockings hung by the fire.
• Halloween Coloring Pages: Pumpkins, cute ghosts and witches on broomsticks, spooky but friendly pages for October parties and class.
• Santa Coloring Pages: Santa down the chimney and reading the list with Mrs. Claus, Christmas Eve for young believers.
• Mother's Day Coloring Pages: Breakfast in bed and animal moms cuddling their babies, pages to color and give on Mother's Day.
• Valentine's Day Coloring Pages: Class card swaps and sweet notes start with heart balloons and love letters for Valentine's Day.
• Easter Coloring Pages: Bunnies painting eggs and the empty tomb at sunrise, so the same sheets serve the egg hunt and Sunday church.
• Pumpkin Coloring Pages: Pumpkin patches and a prize pumpkin on the scales, harvest pages for the months up to Thanksgiving.
• Happy Birthday Coloring Pages: Cakes with candles and a kitten in a gift box, to color for a party or to fold into a homemade card.
• Heart Coloring Pages: Heart mazes and heart-shaped islands, playful designs for Valentine's Day or a love note in the lunchbox.
• American Flag Coloring Pages: The Stars and Stripes on porches and parade routes, a good page for Flag Day, the Fourth or a civics lesson.
• Thanksgiving Coloring Pages: Turkeys, cornucopias and the family table, Thanksgiving pages to keep kids busy while the bird roasts.
• Father's Day Coloring Pages: Shoulder rides and bedtime stories with dads of every species, a card idea for Father's Day morning.

Every other collection in this drawer is in the A to Z index, along with the rest of the catalog.

Holiday coloring pages month by month

Most families print the week before a date, so here is the year in order, with what each collection holds.

January to April

The New Year's coloring pages have fireworks over the New York skyline, party hats, a disco ball and animals staying up for midnight. February belongs to the Valentine's coloring pages, with a cupid on a cloud, a box of chocolates and I love you in bubble letters.

On March 17, the St. Patrick's Day coloring pages bring out leprechauns, pots of gold, rainbows and four-leaf clovers. Then come the Easter coloring pages: patterned eggs, bunnies painting stripes, a chick hatching in a straw nest and a cross wrapped in flowers.

May to August

The Mother's Day coloring pages arrive in May and the Father's Day coloring pages in June, with shoulder rides, a first bike ride and pancakes on a tray. The graduation coloring pages show caps flying over a lawn. On July 4, the Fourth of July coloring pages cover the parade, the backyard grill and the last firework.

September to December

October brings the Halloween coloring pages. November has the Day of the Dead coloring pages with sugar skulls and marigolds, the Veterans Day coloring pages on November 11, and the Thanksgiving coloring pages with turkeys, pies and cornucopias. December ends the year with the Christmas coloring pages.

Winter holiday coloring pages: Christmas, Santa and New Year's Eve

December fills several collections, because children ask for different things. Some want Santa himself, coming down the chimney or riding his sleigh, and the Santa coloring pages are all about him. Others want the little elf who moves every night, found tangled in the tree lights or popping out of the cookie jar in the Elf on the Shelf coloring pages.

Holiday baking gets its own sheets in the gingerbread coloring pages, from a castle with iced towers to cookie men waiting on a tray. For a classroom that keeps the season without the holiday, the snowman coloring pages and the winter coloring pages, with skaters, skiers and animals in the snow, work through January and February.

Summer holiday coloring pages for the long school break

Summer holiday pages are the ones parents print in bulk for long car rides and rainy afternoons. The Fourth of July sheets cover the parade drummer, a picnic table with watermelon and a kettle grill full of burgers and corn.

For the rest of the break, the summer coloring pages have sandcastles, a lemonade stand, a tent by a lake and a treehouse. Children going to the coast can take the beach coloring pages along in the car, with rock pools, shells and a lighthouse on the point.

Why some holiday dates move every year

Children often ask why Christmas stays put while Easter jumps around. Knowing the rule also tells you when to print.

• Fixed dates: New Year's Day (January 1), Valentine's Day (February 14), St. Patrick's Day (March 17), Independence Day (July 4), Halloween (October 31), Veterans Day (November 11) and Christmas (December 25).
• A weekday in a given week: Mother's Day is the second Sunday in May in the United States, Father's Day the third Sunday in June, and Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November, a date set by law in 1941.
• Following the moon: Easter is tied to the first full moon of spring and always lands on the Sunday after it, anywhere from late March to late April.

The moveable ones are worth checking on a calendar in January, so the Easter sheets are printed before the school holiday starts.

Holiday colors children already know

Each holiday has a palette kids recognize at a glance, which helps a young child decide quickly:

• Christmas: red and green, with gold for stars and bells.
• Halloween: orange, black and purple, with ghosts left as white paper.
• Easter: soft pastels, pink, lilac, pale yellow and mint.
• St. Patrick's Day: every shade of green, with gold coins.
• Fourth of July: red, white and blue.
• Thanksgiving: browns, deep reds, mustard and orange.

Winter scenes look colder when the snow stays uncolored and only the sky gets a wash of pale blue.

Holiday coloring pages for a class party

For a group, print several designs from the same holiday rather than a single design for everyone. Children like to choose, and the fast ones can take a second page.

Every collection has two buttons above its grid. Quick to color puts the sheets with big shapes first, for the youngest. Lots of detail puts the busy scenes first, for older kids. A pile of each keeps a whole table busy for about the same time.

The Halloween sheets are drawn cute rather than scary, and the ghost coloring pages are full of friendly ghosts who sip hot chocolate and rake leaves. For a mixed class, the snowmen, the winter sports and the fall coloring pages mark the season without any holiday at all.

Holiday cards, place cards and a countdown

A colored holiday page is easy to turn into something to give or hang up.

1. Below each sheet you want, from any holiday, tap Add to pack.
2. Open the pack and print the whole selection in one go.
3. Fold single-object sheets into cards, cut out shapes for the window, or staple the rest into a little holiday coloring book.

For a holiday table, fold a small sheet in half and write a guest's name on it. For Christmas, set aside a sheet for each evening of December. Birthdays happen all year, and there are cakes in the happy birthday coloring pages, along with banners and a few sheets left open for a name.

Write the child's name and the year on the back of each finished page. One Christmas page a year, kept in a folder, shows how a child's coloring grows.

Printing a whole season ahead

A holiday sheet printed the night before can run into an empty ink cartridge, so print a week early and look at the first copy before the rest.

Each design downloads free as a 300 dpi PDF on A4, which needs no adjusting. With Letter paper, pick fit to page and no border or greeting gets cut. Card stock suits anything cut out for a window or folded into a card. The printing guide points to the right settings, and these original drawings stay free for families, teachers and party hosts every month of the year.