December zodiac signs: Sagittarius and Capricorn

The table covers New York time for the 80 years from 1951 to 2030. Twenty December dates belong to Sagittarius every year, nine belong to Capricorn every year, and two, 21 and 22 December, need the year and the hour.

December holds the last two thirds of Sagittarius: the Moon's decan from 1 or 2 December and Saturn's from 11 or 12 December. Capricorn begins in its first decan, the one given to Jupiter, and carries straight on through New Year. It is the only sign that belongs to two calendar years, so a Capricorn born on 30 December and one born eleven days later have different birth years and the same Sun sign.

Capricorn is the least common Sun sign in almost every birth dataset Shymea has checked. In the Shymea rarity study, which assigns 62.2 million US births from 2000 to 2014 to the exact ingress moments, Capricorn came 12th of 12 with 7.63%. It was also 12th in England and Wales (2025, 7.58%), 12th in Australia (2023) and 12th in New York City (2024). Only Canada's 2024 figures put another sign below it, and that sign was Sagittarius.

Two causes stack up, and December shows both. The first is astronomical. Earth reaches perihelion, its closest point to the Sun, in early January, and moves fastest along its orbit then, so the Sun crosses the 30° of Capricorn in 29.44 days on average, the shortest stay of any sign. Cancer, at the opposite end of the year, gets 31.45. Fewer days means fewer birthdays, before anything else is counted.

The second is the holiday calendar, and the daily birth figures make it hard to miss.

Christmas Day is the quietest date of the whole American year: 6,438 births on average, −43.3% against the typical date, 366th of 366. Christmas Eve is 364th and Boxing Day 361st. The week before is the opposite. 19 December ranks 4th of the year and 20 December 6th, and the gap reopens after the holiday, with 27 and 28 December both in the top 25. Spontaneous labour does not read calendars, so the likeliest explanation is that planned inductions and caesarean births are moved off the holiday and onto the working days around it. That is a hedged reading; the totals do not record why.

Put the two halves of the month side by side and the effect on the signs is direct. December's always-Sagittarius dates average 11,461 births a day. Its always-Capricorn dates, the 23rd to the 31st, average 10,403. The busiest days of the run-up fall on the Sagittarius side of the solstice, and the three emptiest days fall on the Capricorn side. Across the whole month December still ranks 7th of the twelve months for daily births, because the surge before Christmas nearly pays for the dip.

None of this makes a Capricorn special, unlucky or hard to find a partner for, and rarity says nothing about character. It says that a slightly shorter sign happens to contain the three quietest days of the US birth calendar. Capricorn is only modestly rarer than Sagittarius (7.95%), and the Capricorn dates and the rarest sign page has the January half of the story.

Capricorn begins at the exact moment of the December solstice, when the Sun reaches 0° Capricorn and its noon height in northern skies stops falling. Ptolemy names Capricorn one of the two solstitial signs in Tetrabiblos I.11 because "the sun turns when he is at the beginning of these signs and reverses his latitudinal progress, causing summer in Cancer and winter in Capricorn." In Sydney the same moment is the summer solstice; the sign is named for the turning, not for the weather, and Capricorn begins at the same instant in both hemispheres.

For a US birth today, 21 December is the day it happens. In New York the solstice fell on 21 December in 57 of the 80 years from 1951 to 2030, and in every year from 2012 onwards; the last New York solstice on 22 December was 22 December, 12:30 am. So 21 December is a Sagittarius morning and a Capricorn evening in the years when the change comes late, or Capricorn for most of the day when it comes early, as in 21 December, 3:20 am in 2028. In none of the 80 years was 21 December Capricorn from midnight in New York.

Britain is the exception that keeps the old date alive. In London the solstice landed on 21 December in 40 years and on 22 December in 40, a dead heat. Since 2000 it has been 21 December 22 times, so the drift shows there too. In Sydney the usual day is 22 December (69 years), and in 4 years the change waited until 23 December.

With a birth time and birthplace the question has one answer: before the solstice instant, Sagittarius; from it, Capricorn. The zodiac sign calculator works it out from the date, clock time and place of birth.

Yes, for every US birth since 2012, and from midnight. In New York the solstice arrived during 22 December in 23 of the 80 years, every one of them in 2011 or earlier. In the 1950s and 1970s it happened in more than half the years, and the decade table shows the slide.

The slide follows the Gregorian calendar's leap-year rhythm, which the May zodiac signs page explains with its own counts. December simply shows it in its purest form, since the solstice is the one sign change that public almanacs and naval observatories announce to the minute. A 22 December birthday in an old horoscope book was often printed as the first Capricorn day; for anyone born in the US since 2012, it is the second.

Here are the start of Capricorn in New York, London and Sydney, the three places where readers of this page most often disagree. 2027 is a useful year to look at: the solstice comes at 21 December, 9:42 pm in New York, which is already 22 December, 2:42 am in London.

The December Sagittarius is the fire sign as it runs down into winter. From about 2 December the Sun is in the decan the Chaldean order gives to the Moon, and from about 11 December in Saturn's, which ends at the solstice. A mid-December Sagittarius therefore has a Saturn-flavoured face in a Jupiter-ruled sign, which is why astrologers who read decans describe the late part of the sign as more serious than its reputation, closer to the teacher than the backpacker.

Day to day that might be the friend who plans a sabbatical for three years before taking it; the colleague who writes the training manual nobody else wanted to write; the relative who argues about religion at the dinner table and then drives everyone home. It does not mean reckless with money or allergic to commitment. A Sagittarius Sun describes what a person thinks is worth believing in, and the rest of the chart says how carefully they go about it.

Saturn itself spent 23 December 2014 to 20 December 2017 in Sagittarius, apart from a few summer months in 2015 back in Scorpio, so December Sagittarians born in 2015, 2016 and 2017 (before 20 December 2017) have Saturn in their sign. The Sagittarius dates and Ophiuchus page covers the November half.

Ptolemy gives Saturn "the signs opposite Cancer and Leo, namely Capricorn and Aquarius", partly, he says, because "these signs are cold and wintry" (I.17). He makes Capricorn the exaltation of Mars, which "becomes all the more so in Capricorn because in it he is farthest south", and the depression of Jupiter, whose exaltation is the opposite sign, Cancer (I.19). The December Capricorn carries one more twist: its first decan, which runs from the solstice to about the turn of the year, has Jupiter as its face ruler, the planet that is weakest in the sign.

That combination is the textbook explanation for why the early Capricorn is drawn to structures that last: the person who joins a firm at 22 and is running a department at 40; the neighbour who has repaired the same fence every spring for a decade rather than replace it; the friend who answers a wedding invitation the day it arrives. It does not mean cold, joyless or obsessed with status. Saturn's sign asks what will still be standing in ten years, and plenty of Capricorns are very funny about it.

Four slow planets mark out December Capricorn generations. Uranus was in Capricorn from 2 December 1988 and Neptune from 21 November 1984, and both were still there in December 1995, so every December Capricorn from 1988 to 1995 has Uranus and Neptune in their sign. Pluto entered Capricorn for the last stretch on 27 November 2008, which makes every December Capricorn from 2008 to 2023 a Pluto-in-Capricorn native. Saturn arrived on 20 December 2017, the day before the 2017 solstice, and left for Aquarius on 17 December 2020, four days before the 2020 one.

The 2027 solstice is a split-date year across the Atlantic. Capricorn begins at 21 December, 9:42 pm in New York and 21 December, 6:42 pm in Los Angeles, but at 22 December, 2:42 am in London and 22 December, 1:42 pm in Sydney. Two days later Saturn turns direct at 21°01′ Aries (23 December, 9:46 pm New York time), and the New Moon in Capricorn follows at 5°50′ on 27 December, 3:12 pm.

Mercury reaches Capricorn on 18 December, 6:58 am, so a Capricorn born in late December 2027 has Mercury in the same sign as the Sun. The Sagittarius 2027 horoscope and the Capricorn 2027 horoscope take the year month by month.

November zodiac signs: Scorpio until 21 or 22 November, then Sagittarius, with the Sun's Ophiuchus dates. January zodiac signs: the rest of Capricorn and the 19 or 20 January change to Aquarius. All twelve months are on the zodiac signs by date hub.