It was the month of the "Great Recession" starting, though nobody really called it that yet. Looking back at the calendar of December 2007, you realize just how much was shifting under our feet.
It started on a Saturday.
People were still lining up for the original iPhone, which had only been out for a few months. Facebook was just becoming a thing for people who weren't in college. If you look at that specific thirty-one-day stretch, it feels like the last gasp of an old world before the 2008 financial crash changed everything. Honestly, it’s a weirdly nostalgic time to map out.
What the Calendar of December 2007 Actually Looked Like
The month kicked off with a weekend. December 1st was a Saturday. If you were looking at your wall calendar back then—probably a physical one from a mall kiosk—you’d see five Saturdays and five Sundays. That’s a lot of weekend.
For kids, the big deal was Alvin and the Chipmunks hitting theaters on the 14th. For everyone else, it was the writer's strike. The 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike was in full swing by December. Late-night TV was basically a wasteland of reruns. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were off the air for most of the month. It felt quiet. Eerily quiet.
The weather was also making headlines. A massive ice storm hammered the Midwest and Northeast starting around December 8th. Millions lost power. In Oklahoma and Kansas, it was a literal disaster zone. People were huddling around wood stoves while the national economy was quietly fracturing. On December 11th, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates again, trying to stave off the housing bubble burst. We know now it didn't work.
Key Dates and Mid-Month Chaos
- December 1 (Saturday): World AIDS Day.
- December 5 (Wednesday): The Westroads Mall shooting in Omaha. A dark day that stopped the holiday shopping rush in its tracks.
- December 11 (Tuesday): The Fed cuts the fed funds rate to 4.25%.
- December 19 (Wednesday): The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 was signed into law by George W. Bush. This was the big push for biofuels and better fuel economy.
- December 25 (Tuesday): Christmas Day.
- December 31 (Monday): New Year's Eve.
If you were a gamer, you were likely obsessed with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare or Super Mario Galaxy, both of which were fresh on the shelves. The Wii was the "it" gift that year. If you found one in stock in December 2007, you were basically a wizard.
The Cultural Shift You Forgot
Technically, the National Bureau of Economic Research later declared that the Great Recession officially began in December 2007.
Think about that.
While you were at an office holiday party drinking cheap punch, the global economy was technically entering its worst downward spiral since the 30s. But on the surface? People were still obsessed with Britney Spears’ comeback and the release of I Am Legend starring Will Smith. It was a strange juxtaposition of "everything is fine" and "the floor is falling out."
Mobile tech was in this awkward teenage phase. BlackBerries were still the king of the business world. The "CrackBerry" era was peaking. Most people on the calendar of December 2007 were still T9 texting on flip phones, blissfully unaware that the rectangular glass slabs in a few early adopters' pockets would soon destroy their attention spans forever.
Why the Days Felt Different
There was no Instagram. No TikTok. If you wanted to share a photo of your Christmas tree, you uploaded it to Flickr or posted it on your MySpace bulletin. Yeah, MySpace was still alive, though the heartbeat was getting faint.
The mood was heavy but hopeful. Obama and Hillary Clinton were battling it out in the lead-up to the 2008 primaries. You couldn't escape the campaign ads if you lived in Iowa or New Hampshire. It was the first "internet election," and by late December, the momentum was shifting in ways that would change history just a month later in January.
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A Legacy of Transition
What’s wild is how much we’ve lost from that era. Blockbuster was still open. You probably went there on Friday, December 21st, to rent a movie for the weekend. Netflix was still primarily a "DVD by mail" service, though they had just started dabbling in this weird thing called "streaming."
Looking at the calendar of December 2007 now, it serves as a timestamp. It’s a bridge between the analog-leaning 90s/early 2000s and the hyper-digital, post-crash world we live in now. It was the last month of "the before times."
If you're trying to recreate this specific month for a project or just for a hit of nostalgia, remember that the moon was Full on Christmas Eve (December 24th). A "Cold Moon" lighting up the snow. It was a Tuesday.
How to Use This Info Today
If you are researching this specific timeframe for legal, financial, or nostalgic reasons, keep these three things in mind. First, verify day-of-the-week data using a perpetual calendar tool, as many "online generators" glitch on leap years and older decades. Second, remember that the "official" start of the recession was backdated; news reports from the actual month won't use that term yet. Finally, if you're looking for specific weather patterns from that month, the NOAA archives are the only reliable source for the December 2007 ice storms.
Next Steps for Research:
- Use the Wayback Machine to see what websites like CNN or Yahoo looked like during the week of December 10, 2007.
- Cross-reference the Bureau of Labor Statistics data if you are analyzing the economic shift that began exactly during this month.
- Check local library archives for regional newspaper scans to see how the December 2007 weather impacted specific zip codes.