Most people think about holiday cards about two weeks later than they should. The printing is not what is slow. A holiday card has three jobs to do before it reaches anybody’s mantel, and each one takes days, not hours.
Here is how the timing really works this year, and the dates to circle.
The short version
| Date | What it means |
|---|---|
| Early November | The easy time. Plenty of room for changes, and no rush. |
| Thanksgiving, November 26 | The comfortable deadline if you want your cards in other people’s mailboxes by mid-December. |
| December 3 | Last day to order a photo calendar for Christmas. |
| December 5 | Last day to order holiday cards and have them in your hands before Christmas. |
| After December 5 | Send New Year cards instead. More on that below. |
Celebrating Hanukkah? It begins at sundown on December 4 this year, so order by about November 20 to have cards in hand for the first night.
Why it takes longer than you would think
A holiday card is not a print job you pick up the same afternoon. Three things happen between you pressing “order” and the box arriving.
1. We build your card and check your photos. A person takes the design you chose, places your photos, and looks hard at every one of them: is it sharp enough to print at five by seven, is somebody’s head cut off by the edge, is the dark one too dark. This is where we fix the things a phone screen hides. It usually takes a day or two.
2. You approve the proof. We email you a proof and nothing prints until you say it is right. If you spot a misspelled name or decide you prefer the other photo, that is exactly what the proof is for. Every round of changes adds about a day, and you get up to five rounds free. Leave yourself room for at least one.
3. It is printed and shipped to your door. Printing takes a few days, and ground shipping takes about a week to ten days. Shipping is free anywhere in the US, and we email you the tracking number the day it leaves.
Add those up and you get roughly two weeks from order to doorstep. That is where December 5 comes from.
The part people forget: you still have to mail them
December 5 gets the cards to you before Christmas. Then you still have to sign them, address the envelopes, find stamps and get them into the mail, and the Postal Service is at its busiest of the year. It usually asks for holiday mail to be posted by the third week of December, and a card that lands on December 26 is a card that missed.
That is why we say Thanksgiving. Order by then and your cards arrive in early December, you have a relaxed weekend to address them, and they reach the people you are sending them to while it still feels like the season.
Getting it right the first time
A few things save a round of changes, and with it a day:
- Send the original photo, not a screenshot. A screenshot of a photo looks fine on your phone and prints soft. The original from your camera roll is many times sharper.
- Check the spelling of every name before you order, including the family name on the front. It is the most common change we make.
- Pick a photo with room around everybody. Cards are trimmed at the edges, so a photo cropped tight to the tops of people’s heads loses them.
- Tell us what you want fixed. There is a notes box on the order page. “Brighten the one on the left” or “crop out the car” is all we need.
Missed the date? Send New Year cards
If December 5 has come and gone, do not send a rushed Christmas card that arrives in the new year looking late. Send a New Year card that arrives in the new year looking on purpose.
New Year cards have a few things going for them. They arrive after the December pile, so they get read instead of stacked. You have the whole holiday season’s photos to choose from. And nobody ever thinks “they forgot”. The same photo cards come in New Year designs, and they are just as easy to order.
Calendars need a little more time
Photo calendars have thirteen photos to check instead of one or two, and a calendar proof takes a little longer to go through, so the last day to order for Christmas is December 3, two days ahead of cards. A calendar with everybody’s birthdays printed on the right dates is the gift grandparents keep on the wall all year, and extra copies of the same calendar cost a lot less than the first.
The bottom line
Order early November if you can, Thanksgiving if you want it relaxed, December 5 at the very latest for cards. Either way, a person here in Fairfield checks every photo and sends you a proof before anything prints, so the cards that go out look the way you meant them to.