Mega Millions Jackpot hits $1 billion for Christmas Eve drawing

• The Mega Millions jackpot soared to $1 billion ahead of a Christmas Eve drawing.
• If someone wins on Tuesday, they will score the seventh largest prize in the history of the game.
• The lump sum cash option is about $448.8 million, according to the Mega Millions website.

One lucky lottery player could wake up to a billion dollars on Christmas morning this year.

The Mega Millions jackpot hit an estimated $1 billion Tuesday ahead of the Christmas Eve drawing, according to Mega Millions website.

If someone scores a six-number winning ticket on Tuesday, the jackpot will be the biggest prize ever won in December and the seventh biggest in the game’s history.

Opting for the cash lump sum would cut the prize money in half to about $448.8 million, according to the Mega Millions website. Winners can also choose annual payments over time. Mega Millions winnings are subject to state and federal income taxes.

No one has won the jackpot since September, when a Texan grabbed $810 million. The pot has continued to climb in the previous 29 drawings.

Several of the biggest lotto jackpots ever have happened in recent years.

A California man won a whopping $2.04 billion Powerball — the largest lottery prize to date — in 2022. Earlier this year, another California man claimed a $1.7 billion Powerball prize.

The biggest Mega Millions prize, meanwhile, went to a winner in Florida last year who won a jackpot of 1.6 billion dollars.

The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are about one in 302,575,350, according to the Lotto website.

If someone wins on Tuesday, they would not be the first Christmas Eve Mega Millions winner. A $68 million jackpot was won in 2022, but no one ever claimed the prize, ABC News reported.