Remember when the NHL played games on Christmas Day?

This Christmas, like every other Christmas for the past several decades, the NHL will be taking the day off. Players, coaches, arena employees, and fans alike will be able to spend the day hanging with their families, opening presents, and maybe sharing in the eggnog.

It’s become a tradition of sorts that the NHL, unlike other sports leagues, won’t play on one of America’s biggest holidays. The same way the league avoids Thanksgiving Day — which is now about football as much as it is turkey — hockey also avoids Christmas Day, which the NBA has embraced wholeheartedly over the past few decades.

The result is that hockey doesn’t really have a holiday to call its own, for better or worse. As ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski and Emily Kaplan noted in a recent debate-style article, there are definitely pros and cons to the idea of NHL games on Christmas. Players surely enjoy having the day off to spend time with loved ones. Owners might be wondering about missed opportunities to increase revenue.

But what’s interesting about the NHL’s Christmas tradition (or lack thereof) is that it hasn’t always been that way. From the early 1920s through 1971, the NHL held games on Christmas every year. Back then, it was the NHL, not just the NBA, that had embraced the holiday spirit. (Well, unless you think taking the day off is even more in the holiday spirit, which is probably right.)

The final Christmas game in the NHL was between the Los Angeles Kings and California Golden Seals on Dec. 25, 1971. The Golden Seals won, 3-1, behind an empty net goal from Stan Gilbertson — the last Christmas goal in NHL history.

A year later, the NHL stopped scheduling Christmas Day games, and the year after that, it established an official moratorium preventing the scheduling of games on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve. Now we also have the roster freeze, which prevents teams from making transactions between Dec. 19-27. Part of why that exists is to help families stay together during those holidays when a trade or reassignment could screw things up.

You can see why the players would prefer this over being forced to travel around the country playing hockey on one of the few days of the year when most of society shuts down to relax.

Butch Goring, who played for L.A. in the final Christmas game, told NHL.com last year that he was happy the league stopped scheduling those contests.

“It’s a time when you’re not really in the mood to play hockey,” said Goring, who now covers the Islanders as a broadcaster. “You grow up as kids; the 24th, 25th, even Boxing Day in Canada is the 26th. It’s a time to relax and enjoy what you did the night before, recover from what you did the night before. When you grow up with that concept, it’s tough to get yourself in the mood.”

Another former player, Gerry O’Flaherty, made his NHL debut on Christmas, but even he admitted to Vice Sports that taking the holiday off is the right thing to do.

”I think it’s a special day for families and they should be together,” he said. “I know it’s a major sports day, but for the NHL to continue this, I think it’s really special for all the players who have families. It’s a special day, and I think it should be treated as a special day.”

Some fans may wish that the league would whip out a stacked holiday schedule to try to compete with the NBA, and the NHLPA did show some willingness to consider it back in 2009. However, that was under a different union head, and players would surely want something in return for giving up one of their few guaranteed days off during the season. (One possibility, just speculating here, but maybe the players could demand future Olympic participation as part of those talks for the next collective bargaining agreement.)

In the meantime, the NHL will extend its absence on Christmas Day for a 46th consecutive year. Here’s to hoping we can all have a relaxing day off, even if we’re stuck watching hoops instead of hockey.