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It’s all on Santa’s shoulders.

The kickoff of the “Santa Claus rally” period in Tuesday’s holiday-shortened trading session saw the S&P 500 SPX jump 1.1%, erasing a December decline as it scored a third straight gain and undid damage from a midweek rout last week. 2024 has been a stellar year for the large-cap benchmark— but with little thanks to December, which remains in danger of bucking its history as one of the best months of the year for stocks.

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“The S&P has put up reasonable numbers over the last two sessions, as it attempts to resolve the oversold condition, but the rally has lacked momentum,” said Jeff deGraaf, chairman and head of technical research at Renaissance Macro Research, in a note ahead of Tuesday’s opening bell.

He noted that December provides a 74% historical probability of positive returns, “but 2024 is shaping up to be the 26% outlier unless it gets some serious help.” (See chart below.)

That may be where the jolly old elf comes in. The Santa Claus rally period began at Tuesday’s opening bell and will end on Jan. 3. First described by Stock Trader’s Almanac founder Yale Hirsch in 1972, the Santa rally speaks to a seasonal tendency for the S&P 500 to rise over the last five days trading days of a calendar year and the first two of the new year.

Read: Wall Street’s ‘Santa Claus rally’ window is about to open with the Dow down in December

Average gains for the S&P 500 over the seven-trading-day period since 1969 are a respectable 1.3%, according to the Almanac and Dow Jones Market Data. The average S&P 500 gain over any seven-trading-day period is 0.24%.

Also see: Stock market ‘Santa Claus rally’ might get a late start this year

What’s behind the phenomenon? MarketWatch columnist Mark Hulbert has argued that it may be in part due to the fact that investors don’t want to think about the markets over the holiday period. That’s perhaps allowed the pattern to endure, even though most such seasonal events tend to get discounted away by eager investors once they’re publicized.

The rally period was off to a solid start Tuesday, with the S&P 500 turning its December pullback into a month-to-date gain of 0.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA rose nearly 400 points, or 0.9%, while nursing a December decline of 4%. The Nasdaq Composite COMP rose 1.3% Tuesday and was up 4.2% in December on a resurgence by tech-related stocks.