Holiday Hours Messages: 25 Templates for 2026

Every December, small businesses publish the same message in a dozen places: “We’re closed for the holidays. We’ll be back soon.” It is polite, and it costs them customers. The person reading it wanted something: a gift that arrives by the 24th, an appointment in the first week of January, an answer about a return. “Back soon” tells them to look somewhere else.

The messages that keep customers do two extra things. They give a real return date, and they say what still works while the team is away: the online shop is taking orders, the chat can answer questions, bookings for January are open. Below are 25 templates written that way, grouped by channel, with the 2026 dates already filled in. Copy them, change the bracketed parts, and adjust the dates to your own plan.

The 2026 dates to plan around

Christmas Day falls on a Friday this year, which hands many businesses a long weekend from Thursday 24 December, and New Year’s Day is also a Friday. Hanukkah starts early, on the evening of 4 December, and the US Postal Service flags that on its own deadlines page.

Sources: OPM federal holidays, GOV.UK bank holidays, Hebcal, Chanukah 2026, Drik Panchang, Diwali 2026 and USPS 2026 holiday shipping deadlines, all read on 21 October 2026. Diwali dates can differ by a day between regional calendars, so check the one your team follows.

A note on shipping cut-offs: the USPS dates are the days to hand parcels over. Your order cut-off has to come earlier, by however long it takes you to pick and pack. A shop that ships the next working day would tell customers to order standard shipping by Wednesday 16 December and Priority by Thursday 17 December, which is what the templates below assume. If you use another carrier, read its own holiday page and change the dates.

What every holiday hours message needs

1. 1

   The dates, with weekdays. “Closed 24 to 27 December” is clearer than “closed over Christmas”. Weekdays stop people doing calendar arithmetic.

2. 2

   The return day and time. “Back Monday 28 December at 9am” tells a customer whether to wait. “Back after the holidays” does not.

3. 3

   What still works. Orders still ship, the chat still answers, January bookings are open. This line is the one that keeps the sale.

4. 4

   Where to get help now. A help page, the website chat, an urgent route if someone is checking. One place, not five.

5. 5

   The deadline that matters. The last order date for Christmas delivery, the last day to book before you close, when returns restart.

Two smaller habits help. Add your time zone if customers buy from other regions, because “back at 9am” means three different things across the US. And keep the wording the same on every channel, so a customer who sees the banner, then the chat, then the email gets one story.

25 holiday hours message templates, by channel

Text in square brackets is yours to replace. The dates follow one example plan: closed 24 to 27 December, short hours 28 to 31 December, closed 1 January. Swap in your own.

The chat greetings above follow the same rules as any good opening line: short, specific, and ending on a question. Our guide to writing chatbot greetings has more examples for the rest of the year.

Setting holiday hours on Google Business Profile

For a local business, the hours Google shows in Search and Maps matter as much as anything on your own site. Google’s help page, How to set Special hours (read 21 October 2026), gives the steps on a computer:

1. Go to your Business Profile and choose Edit profile, then Hours.
2. In Business hours, select the edit icon next to Special hours.
3. Pick a date: a suggested holiday, a custom date, or one you already set.
4. Mark the day open and enter the hours, or leave it closed. You can add more than one set of hours for a day.
5. Select Save.

Three details from the same page are worth knowing. Google suggests confirming your hours for official holidays even when they match your normal hours, so people can trust what they see. Special hours are meant for changes of up to six days in a row; for a closure of seven days or more, Google recommends marking the business temporarily closed instead. And special hours only show if your profile is set to open with main hours.

Setting the email autoresponder

In Gmail, the setting is called the vacation responder: Settings, See all settings, then the General tab. You enter the date range, a subject and the message. Google’s help page on sending an automatic reply when you’re out of office (read 21 October 2026) adds two useful details: the reply runs from 12:00 AM on the first day to 11:59 PM on the last, and each person usually gets it only the first time they write, then again if they write after four days. So a customer who emails three times in one evening sees your message once. Put everything they need in that one reply.

Set a calendar reminder for the morning you reopen to switch it off. An autoresponder still promising a reply “from 4 January” on 12 January does more harm than no autoresponder at all.

Worked example: one salon’s closure week

Juniper Lane Hair is a salon we made up for this example. It closes at 1pm on Thursday 24 December, stays closed Friday 25 to Monday 28 December, opens 10am to 4pm from Tuesday 29 to Thursday 31 December, closes again on Friday 1 January and is back to normal on Saturday 2 January. Early January is one of its busiest weeks, because people want a fresh cut for the new year.

Say 40 people get in touch during the four closed days and half of them want an appointment. Those are assumptions for the arithmetic, not benchmarks. That is 20 booking requests arriving while nobody is at the desk. If the salon’s average appointment is $70, also invented, every five of those who give up and book elsewhere is $350 of January work gone before the salon reopens. Here is what each channel says, and what still works behind it:

The difference shows up in a single conversation. The same customer writes on Saturday night, the day after Christmas:

Neither reply is rude. The first one simply arrives after the slot has gone. The salon’s holiday message did its job of saying it was closed; it did not let the customer do what they came to do.

Your holiday hours checklist

Do this once, in the first half of November, and again the week before you close.

• Decide the plan first: closed days, short days, the order and booking cut-offs, who checks urgent messages.
• Write one master message with the five parts above, then cut it down for each channel.
• Website: banner, contact page, shipping page with the cut-off dates, and the answer your chat gives to “are you open?”.
• Google Business Profile: special hours for every changed day, including the days you are open as normal on a public holiday.
• Email: autoresponder dates set, subject line with the return date, a reminder to switch it off.
• WhatsApp and social: away message scheduled, holiday hours post pinned, cut-off reminder planned.
• Phone: greeting recorded or written with the return day, and changed back when you reopen.
• Order emails and the door: a one-line note in confirmations, a sign in the window.
• The return: a “we’re back” post and an hour blocked on the first morning for the messages that waited.

Online stores have a second job in the same weeks, the Black Friday and Cyber Monday rush. Our holiday season support plan for 2026 covers the questions that peak then and how to prepare answers in advance, and the 2026 holiday shopping numbers show when the spending lands.

Keeping the chat answering while you are closed

Every template above is better when the line “the chat can answer questions now” is true. With EzyConn, the AI agent keeps answering on your website chat and on WhatsApp while the team is away, from your own website pages, files and the answers you write. Most holiday questions are already on your site somewhere: delivery dates, returns, gift cards, opening hours.

• Teach it your holiday hours. Add template 12 as an exact question and answer, which the agent uses first, word for word. Update it when your plans change, and again when you reopen.
• Keep the details of everyone who writes. The pre-chat form asks for a name, email and phone number before the conversation starts, so a question that needs a person still leaves you a way to reply on the first morning back. Our guide to capturing website leads after hours covers the rest of the year.
• Let people book. For service businesses, from the Starter plan, the agent offers real free times in the chat and books them, reading your connected Google Calendar or Microsoft 365 calendar so it only offers times you are free. Confirmations go out by email. The bookings page shows how it works.
• Pass the rest to your team. When a question needs a person, the agent offers one. If nobody is free, the customer sees “All our agents are currently busy. We’ll notify you shortly.” and the whole conversation waits in your inbox for the morning you are back.
• Your phone line, in your words. From the Starter plan, the agent can answer calls on your own Twilio number with a greeting you write, such as template 17, and answers callers from the same knowledge as the chat. Bookings happen in the website chat, so point callers there. The AI phone answering page has the setup.

The AI agent is on every plan, Free included, with no card. The website chat goes live in about 3 minutes with one script tag. You can add a free AI chatbot to your website before the holidays and ask it what your customers will ask you in December, or compare the plans on the pricing page. To connect WhatsApp as well, see the WhatsApp integration.

Start free and write your holiday hours answer today.

Holiday hours messages: common questions

Keep reading

• Black Friday 2026: a six week support plan
• How to capture website leads after hours
• How to write chatbot greetings people answer
• Holiday shopping 2026: the numbers
• Appointment booking in the chat