Christmas Coloring Pages (Free Printable PDFs)

What’s in this Christmas coloring collection

You get 24 original Christmas coloring pages, all in the same cute, easy kawaii style: thick outlines, round shapes and smiling faces. The classics are here (tree, Santa, reindeer, snowman, elf, gingerbread, stockings, wreath, candy canes, presents), plus a polar bear, a penguin, a fox and a puppy in holiday gear.

Hi, I’m Niks. Every December, the coloring pages in my house get a second life. The best ones become cards, tree decorations or wrapping for Grandma’s present. So I built this set around one question: what will this page turn into once it’s colored? The whole set also comes as one PDF.

What can each Christmas page become?

Any of these Christmas coloring pages works as plain coloring, but each one has a job it does best afterward. I sorted all 24 into four groups. You’ll need scissors, tape and a hole punch, nothing fancier.

Our favorite Christmas coloring pages

Happy Christmas Tree with Presents

A chubby tree with a happy face, a star, round ornaments, garlands and little hearts, standing in a pot with four presents around it. 44 spaces. If you print one page this year, print this one.

Baby Reindeer in a Snow Globe

A baby reindeer holds a wrapped gift inside a snow globe full of snow dots, hearts and sparkles. Kids decide what color snow is. At my kitchen table the vote was pink. I lost.

Six Christmas Ornaments to Color and Cut Out

A striped bauble, a dotted bell, a zigzag star, a heart, a teardrop and a snowflake sit in two neat rows. Color, cut, hang. It’s my pick if you came for a Christmas ornament coloring page.

Snowman with Scarf and Mittens: Let It Snow

A happy snowman in a hat, a striped scarf and mittens, under LET IT SNOW in bubble letters. 53 spaces, and it folds into a card.

Polar Bear with a Mug of Hot Cocoa

A chubby polar bear in a knitted hat and a scarf holds a heart-covered mug of cocoa with marshmallows. I color this one myself, with a real mug of cocoa going cold beside me.

Wrapped Gift Boxes Pattern

Rows of wrapped boxes, each with its own hearts, stars, dots, stripes or zigzags, many of them smiling. At 221 spaces it’s the biggest page here by a mile. Then wrap something in it.

Which Christmas coloring page is right for your child?

Pick by spaces to color: the fewer the spaces, the younger the child. The style is the same on every page, so that number is the real difference.

Want easy Christmas coloring pages for toddlers? Start at the top row and work down as December goes on.

Christmas ornament coloring pages in this set

Ornaments star on three pages: Six Christmas Ornaments to Color and Cut Out, the Giant Smiling Christmas Ornament and the Snowflake Ornament Mandala. Smaller ones hang on the tree, the wreath and the Merry Christmas card.

For real decorations, print the ornament sheet on light cardstock and cut each shape out with a thin white edge. The rim hides wobbly cutting, and the colors pop against a green tree.

Christmas tree coloring pages

Christmas trees show up on four pages: the Happy Christmas Tree with Presents, the Six Patterned Christmas Trees, the Puppy Pulling a Sled with a Christmas Tree and Christmas Doodles.

The six patterned trees look best when they don’t match. Give each its own green (yellow-green, forest, blue-green, even a white “snowy” one) and color the dots from one shared set, so they still look like a family.

Christmas coloring pages for adults

Honest answer: these are easy pages, not detailed mandalas. But a few are long and soothing in a “just one more peppermint” way: the Wrapped Gift Boxes Pattern (221 spaces), the Candy Canes and Peppermints Pattern (144), the Christmas Wreath with a Big Bow (101) and the Snowflake Ornament Mandala (60).

Pick four colors, say red, deep green, gold and pale blue, and use nothing else. The patterns end up looking like real wrapping paper.

How to color Christmas pages: 5 tips

1. Keep candy cane stripes crisp

Do every red stripe first, then the rest. One color at a time keeps red out of the white. Same trick for peppermint swirls.

2. Give white things a little color

Snowmen, polar bears, Santa’s beard: all white, like the paper. Shade their edges pale blue or light gray and leave the middle bare. Suddenly the snowman looks round and cold.

3. Make gingerbread look baked

Warm light brown first, then darker brown around the edges, like the cookie got an extra minute in the oven. Leave the icing white.

4. Add rosy cheeks

Lots of things here have smiling faces. Add a pink oval under each eye and they look like they just came in from the cold. For more faces like these, try our Hello Kitty coloring pages.

5. Match the tool to the child

Chunky crayons for toddlers. Colored pencils for the tiny hearts and zigzags on the sheets and patterns. Markers give bold reds and greens, on heavier paper so they don’t bleed. Glitter glue goes on the stars last. Trust me.

A little Christmas history to share while you color

Something to talk about while the crayons go round:

1. Most churches celebrate Christmas on December 25, but many Orthodox Christians celebrate on January 7, following the older Julian calendar.
2. Christmas trees began in Germany and caught on in Britain after a newspaper printed a picture of Queen Victoria’s family around a decorated tree in 1848.
3. The first glass Christmas ornaments were blown in Lauscha, a small German town, in the 1800s.
4. Queen Elizabeth I of England is often credited with the first gingerbread men, made to look like her guests.
5. Both male and female reindeer grow antlers, which is unusual among deer.
6. The X in “Xmas” is the Greek letter chi, the first letter of the Greek word for Christ.

Christmas classroom and party ideas

Last December I put a stack of these on a holiday craft table. Five minutes in, the kids asked for scissors. So most of these ideas end with cutting.

• Make-it sorting. Kids sort a shuffled stack into cards, decorations, gift wrap and fridge pictures, then pick one job and make it.
• Christmas vocabulary. Find and label the holly, pinecone, sleigh, peppermint and mitten.
• Counting practice. Six cookies, six stockings, six trees, six ornaments: how many in all?
• Story sequence. Line up the elf, Santa and the reindeer sleigh, and let kids tell the story of Christmas Eve.
• An Advent coloring book. Staple the all-pages PDF into a book, or hand out one page a day from December 1.

Teachers, our free classroom license spells out what you can print.

Printing tips for the best results

• Print the whole set at once. The all-pages PDF is a free printable Christmas coloring book of 24 pages.
• Print in black and white with “Fit to page.” It’s pure line art. Printing Christmas colouring pages on A4? They fit fine.
• Use light cardstock for cards and ornaments. Markers won’t soak through it.

How I made and checked these pages

Every one of these Christmas coloring pages is an original ColorTheDay design, and I checked each before it went live. Outlines must be bold and closed, every page simple enough for a preschooler, and every title true to what’s drawn. One page didn’t pass, so I left it out. The “make it into” groups are my own picks, and the “spaces to color” numbers are counted from each page, not guessed.

Find more celebrations in our holiday coloring pages, starting with our Halloween coloring pages, or meet more cute critters in our animal coloring pages. Then scroll up, pick your favorite Christmas coloring pages for kids and tap Download PDF!