# Christmas 2026 and New Year 2027: The Dates That Decide Your Year-End > Christmas Day 2026 is Friday, December 25, and New Year's Day 2027 is Friday, January 1. The dates that decide a year-end shipping and planning schedule, and the files that come with them. Source: https://toolpantry.app/blog/christmas-2026-and-new-year-2027-dates Two Fridays in a row, at either end of the year. That is not a coincidence, and it decides a lot: which day you ship, which day you are closed, and how many weekends you get. Here are the dates that actually change a plan. ## Quick answer **Short answer:** Christmas Day 2026 is **Friday, December 25**, Christmas Eve is Thursday the 24th, and Boxing Day is Saturday the 26th — with the UK substitute bank holiday on Monday the 28th. New Year's Day 2027 is **Friday, January 1**, which usually buys a three-day weekend. For parcels, the dates are tighter than the holidays: USPS wants them in by **December 17** in the contiguous US, and international mail by **December 9** — the [holiday shipping deadlines guide](https://toolpantry.app/blog/holiday-shipping-deadlines-2026) has every carrier's table. ## The dates | Date | Day | What it is | |---|---|---| | Sunday, November 29, 2026 | Sunday | First Sunday of Advent in the 2026 liturgical calendar | | Thursday, November 26, 2026 | Thursday | US Thanksgiving | | Friday, November 27, 2026 | Friday | Black Friday | | Friday, December 4, 2026 | Friday, from sundown | Hanukkah begins; ends at nightfall on Saturday, December 12 | | Thursday, December 24, 2026 | Thursday | Christmas Eve | | Friday, December 25, 2026 | Friday | Christmas Day | | Saturday, December 26, 2026 | Saturday | Boxing Day; Kwanzaa begins and runs to January 1 | | Monday, December 28, 2026 | Monday | UK substitute bank holiday for Boxing Day | | Thursday, December 31, 2026 | Thursday | New Year's Eve | | Friday, January 1, 2027 | Friday | New Year's Day; last day of Kwanzaa | | Wednesday, January 6, 2027 | Wednesday | Epiphany / Three Kings' Day | | Thursday, January 7, 2027 | Thursday | Christmas on the Julian calendar | Two details that catch people out. **Hanukkah begins at sundown**, so a calendar entry with a start time is more honest than a date-only one — and it is early this year, which is why USPS flags it separately. And **two Fridays land at either end of the year**: Christmas on a Friday and New Year's on a Friday, so the year-end break is one day longer than the dates alone suggest. ## The shipping dates are earlier than the holiday For delivery before December 25, 2026, in the contiguous United States: - **USPS Ground Advantage and First-Class Mail:** December 17 - **USPS Priority Mail:** December 18 - **USPS Priority Mail Express:** December 19 - **International mail:** December 9 (Express International: December 16) - **Military addresses:** November 4 for Ground Advantage - **FedEx Ground:** December 18 · **FedEx 2Day:** December 23 · **FedEx SameDay:** December 24 UPS is closed for Thanksgiving on November 26 and observes the day after on November 27, with no UPS Ground pickup on either. On December 24 and December 31 it offers Air and international Air pickup only, and only if prearranged by December 18 and December 28 respectively. The full tables, including what "observed holiday" means for each carrier, are in the [holiday shipping deadlines guide](https://toolpantry.app/blog/holiday-shipping-deadlines-2026). And the one that costs you the most: **retailers cut off earlier than carriers do**, because a retailer still has to receive, pick, pack and hand the parcel over. Those dates live on the retailer's page. ## The files that come with all of this Year-end is when a lot of PDFs get generated at once: price lists, gift cards, shipping labels, packing slips, return policies, the catalogue that goes to every wholesale account. They are also usually the largest files in the business, and they all get emailed in the same fortnight. - **Shipping labels and packing slips** are PDF attachments on order confirmations. A multi-page label pack from a print driver is several megabytes, and the email carrying it is what gets rejected. [Compress PDF](https://toolpantry.app/compress-pdf) shrinks it in the browser, so a document with customer names on it never reaches a third-party server to be squeezed. - **Gift cards and product photos** come from suppliers at 2–5 MB each. The [image compressor](https://toolpantry.app/image-compressor) handles a whole batch and hands back a ZIP; the [100 KB](https://toolpantry.app/compress-image-to-100kb) and [500 KB](https://toolpantry.app/compress-image-to-500kb) tools hit an exact ceiling, with measured numbers in the [Black Friday 2026 guide](https://toolpantry.app/blog/black-friday-2026-dates). - **The catalogue PDF** is the worst case: 40–80 pages from a design tool, frequently 5–10 MB, uploaded to a portal and emailed to customers in the same week. Compress it once, reuse the small file. To know how many days you have left, the [time duration calculator](https://toolpantry.app/time-duration-calculator) counts from today to any date on this page. Do it in November, not on December 23. ## What this guide is not - **Not a celebration calendar.** The dates are fixed; the meanings are not, and a household marks them differently. This is a planning reference, not an observance guide. - **Not a promise of delivery.** Every carrier says actual delivery depends on origin, destination, acceptance time and conditions. - **Not a retailer list.** Order cutoffs, stock handling and shipping minimums are set per retailer and are usually stricter than the carrier's. ## Notes By the Tool Pantry team, October 2026. The dates and weekdays were checked against published 2026–2027 holiday calendars on October 21, 2026. Observance dates are fixed; how each household or business marks them is not. ## FAQ **What day of the week is Christmas Day 2026?** Friday, December 25, 2026. Christmas Eve is Thursday, December 24, and Boxing Day is Saturday, December 26. The UK substitute bank holiday for Boxing Day falls on Monday, December 28. **When is New Year's Day 2027?** Friday, January 1, 2027, which is a public holiday in most countries. Because it lands on a Friday it usually creates a three-day weekend. Epiphany falls on Wednesday, January 6, 2027, and Christmas on the Julian calendar falls on Thursday, January 7, 2027. **When do I have to post parcels for Christmas delivery?** For delivery before December 25, 2026, USPS asks for December 17 for Ground Advantage and First-Class Mail, December 18 for Priority Mail and December 19 for Priority Mail Express in the contiguous United States. International mail needs to go by December 9, and FedEx Ground closes on December 18. Retailers cut off earlier than carriers do.