Attacks during Christmas celebrations

Salvatore Riina (16 November 1930 – 17 November 2017), called Totò 'u Curtu (Sicilian for '"Totò the Short"', Totò being the diminutive of Salvatore), was an Italian mobster and chief of the Sicilian Mafia, known for a ruthless murder campaign that reached a peak in the early 1990s with the assassinations of Antimafia Commission prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, resulting in widespread public outcry and a major crackdown by the authorities. He was also known by the nicknames la belva ("the beast") and il capo dei capi (Sicilian: 'u capu di 'i capi, "the boss of bosses").

On December 25, 2020, Anthony Quinn Warner detonated a recreational vehicle (RV) bomb in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, United States, killing himself, injuring eight people and damaging dozens of buildings in the surrounding area. It took place at 166 Second Avenue North between Church Street and Commerce Street at 6:30 am, adjacent to an AT&T network hub, resulting in days-long communication service outages.

On Christmas Eve 1985, David Lewis Rice murdered the entire Goldmark family, believing the father was a major Jewish Communist official plotting to surrender America to a World Communist government.

On November 21, 2021, Darrell Edward Brooks Jr. drove a sport utility vehicle (SUV) through the annual Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, United States, killing six people and injuring 62 others.

Harry T. Moore and his wife, Harriette V. S. Moore, were pioneer activists and leaders of the early Civil Rights Movement in the United States and became the first martyrs of the movement. On the night of Christmas, December 25, 1951, a bomb that had been planted under the bedroom floor of the Moores' home in Mims, Florida, exploded. They had celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary earlier that day. Harry died in the ambulance in transit from the attack, and Harriette died from her injuries nine days later, on January 3, 1952. Their deaths were the first assassination of any activist to occur during the Civil Rights Movement and the only time that a husband and wife were killed during the history of the movement.

The Kravica attack was an attack on the Bosnian Serb village of Kravica by the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) from the Srebrenica enclave on Orthodox Christmas Day, 7 January 1993. The attack was organized to coincide with the Serbian Orthodox Christmas, leaving the Serbs unprepared for any attack. 43-46 people died in the attack on the Serb side: 30-35 soldiers and 11-13 civilians.

The 2007 Christmas violence in Kandhamal violence refers to the violence that occurred during the Christmas of 2007 between the groups led by Sangh Parivar together with the Sangh-affiliated Kui Samaj and the Christians in the Kandhamal district of Odisha.

The Bugesera invasion (French: Invasion de Bugesera), also known as the Bloody Christmas (French: Noël Rouge), was a military attack which was conducted against Rwanda by Inyenzi rebels who aimed to overthrow the government in December 1963. The Inyenzi were a collection of ethnically Tutsi exiles who were affiliated with the Rwandan political party Union Nationale Rwandaise (UNAR), which had supported Rwanda's deposed Tutsi monarchy. The Inyenzi opposed Rwanda's transformation upon independence from Belgium into a state run by the ethnic Hutu majority through the Parti du Mouvement de l'Emancipation Hutu (PARMEHUTU), an anti-Tutsi political party led by President Grégoire Kayibanda. In late 1963, Inyenzi leaders decided to launch an invasion of Rwanda from their bases in neighbouring countries to overthrow Kayibanda. While an attempted assault in November was stopped by the government of Burundi, early in the morning on 21 December 1963, several hundred Inyenzi crossed the Burundian border and captured the Rwandan military camp in Gako, Bugesera. Bolstered with seized arms and recruited locals, the Iyenzi—numbering between 1,000 and 7,000—marched on the Rwandan capital, Kigali. They were stopped 12 miles (19 kilometres) south of the city at Kanzenze Bridge along the Nyabarongo River by multiple units of the Garde Nationale Rwandaise (GNR). The GNR routed the rebels with their superior firepower, and in subsequent days repelled further Inyenzi attacks launched from the Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

On 25 December 2013, three bombings occurred in two locations in Baghdad, Iraq. They targeted Christians, killing 38 people and wounding 70 others.

Two shootings in Nigeria occurred on Christmas Day church services in northern Nigeria on 25 December 2012, at churches in Maiduguri and Potiskum. At least twelve casualties were reported. Terror organisation Boko Haram claimed not to be responsible, however is suspected to be.