Christmas Opening Hours: Where to Put Them So Customers See Them
Every December, somewhere near you, a customer drives to a shop that Google said was open, finds the shutters down, and leaves a one-star review from the car park. The business did nothing wrong except forget to tell the internet it was closed.
Christmas opening hours are a small job that gets skipped because it feels like admin. It is admin. It is also the thing people most want to know about your business in the last week of the year. Here’s where your hours need to go, how to set them, and a template you can copy.
The rule: four places, one set of hours
Customers don’t look in one place. Some search Google and read the panel on the right. Some open your website on their phone. Some check Facebook because that’s where they last saw you. And some just walk up to the door.
So your Christmas and New Year hours need to be in all four of these, and they need to agree with each other:
| Where | Who sees it | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Anyone who searches your name or “near me” | Set special hours for each date |
| Your website | Anyone who clicks through, or has you bookmarked | A short notice in the footer or contact page |
| Your Facebook page | Regulars and people who message you | A pinned post with the dates |
| The door | Walk-ups | A printed poster at eye level |
Google first, because that’s where most people look and where getting it wrong does the most damage.
Google Business Profile: set the special hours
Google lets you set special hours for specific dates on top of your normal weekly hours. Around bank holidays it often prompts you to confirm them, and if you don’t, it shows a “hours might differ” warning next to your listing. Customers read that as “probably shut”.
To set them:
- Search your own business name on Google while signed in to the account that manages the profile, or go to Google Maps and open your listing. You’ll see your management panel above the normal results.
- Choose Edit profile, then Hours.
- Look for the special hours section and add a date.
- For each date, either enter the hours you’re actually open or mark it as closed.
- Save, and check the listing in a private browsing window to see what customers see.
Do this for every date between Christmas Eve and the first working day in January, including the days where your hours are normal, so each one reads as confirmed.
The one thing people get wrong: marking a day closed is better than leaving your normal hours up and hoping. “Closed on 26 December” means a customer stays at home and comes back on the 29th. Normal hours on the 26th means they turn up, find you shut, and tell Google about it. If you haven’t been through it, we’ve written about what to do when a bad review lands, but this is one you can simply avoid.
If you haven’t set a profile up yet, or you aren’t sure you’re in control of yours, start with our guide to setting up a Google Business Profile. And if your listing isn’t appearing at all, that’s a separate problem with its own fixes.
While you’re in there, write a short post about your festive hours too. Google Business Profile posts sit right on the listing, and “here are our Christmas hours” is one of the few posts customers actually want to read.
Your website: the footer, not a news page
On your own site, the hours go somewhere every page shares: the footer, or a short banner at the top of the contact page. Keep it to the exceptions. Something like:
Christmas hours: Closed 25–28 December and 1 January. Open as usual on all other days.
Two lines, and it answers the question. We’ve gone into what belongs in a website footer separately, and opening hours are near the top of that list all year round.
If your site is one you can’t easily edit yourself, send the lines above to whoever looks after it in November, not on the 23rd of December.
Facebook: pin it
Write a short post with the dates and pin it to the top of your page so it stays visible as other posts arrive. A photo of the shop looking festive helps, but the dates are the point. If you’ve never set a page up properly, our Facebook page guide covers it.
Say the same dates you put on Google. If Facebook says you’re open Boxing Day and Google says you’re closed, you’ve created exactly the confusion you were trying to avoid.
The door: a poster, printed, at eye level
Last and simplest. Print your hours on an A4 sheet and put it on the door at eye level, not down by the handle. Big dates, big “CLOSED” or “OPEN”, and your website underneath. Put it up in the first week of December: the customer who sees it on the 10th will remember it on the 24th.
A Christmas opening hours template you can copy
Here’s a plain text layout for Christmas Eve to 2 January. Copy it, fill in the blanks, and use the same version in all four places. In 2026 Christmas Day falls on a Friday and Boxing Day on a Saturday, which means the Boxing Day bank holiday moves to Monday 28 December. Check gov.uk for the exact bank holiday dates in any given year before you print.
CHRISTMAS & NEW YEAR OPENING HOURS
Thu 24 Dec (Christmas Eve) ______ to ______
Fri 25 Dec (Christmas Day) CLOSED
Sat 26 Dec (Boxing Day) ______
Sun 27 Dec ______
Mon 28 Dec (bank holiday) ______
Tue 29 Dec ______ to ______
Wed 30 Dec ______ to ______
Thu 31 Dec (New Year's Eve) ______ to ______
Fri 1 Jan (New Year's Day) CLOSED
Sat 2 Jan ______ to ______
Normal hours resume from Mon 4 Jan.
Fill every line, including the ones where you’re open as usual, so the list is complete. A gap reads as “don’t know”.
What this looks like for different trades
The template is the same, but what goes in the blanks isn’t.
- Pubs have the most complicated week of anyone: Christmas Day lunchtime only, late on New Year’s Eve, closed New Year’s Day. Every one of those is an exception Google needs told about individually, and “pub Christmas opening hours” is exactly what people search at 11am on Christmas morning.
- Pharmacies are often rota’d to open on bank holidays for a few hours, and the NHS directory may list those hours too. Make sure your profile matches what the NHS says, because customers will see both.
- Takeaways close for a few days and reopen with a rush. Set the closed dates, and make the reopening date clear so the first order of the year goes to you.
- Salons and barbers are flat out until Christmas Eve, then shut. Say when the last appointments are, and mark the closed days so people stop ringing a phone nobody’s answering.
- Garages often shut for the full fortnight. Fine, but a customer whose car has died on the 28th needs to learn that from Google, not from a locked gate.
Set a reminder for next year
This has to be done again every year, because Google’s special hours are for specific dates and won’t carry over. Put a note in your calendar for the first week of November: Google, then the website, then Facebook, then the door, all from the same filled-in template.
Here’s where we declare our interest: if the website step is the one you keep skipping because you don’t have a site, or the one you have is too awkward to update, our team designs and builds one free from your Google Business Profile, with hosting at £24 a month including VAT as the only cost and no minimum term. Here’s how that works. But whether it’s our site or someone else’s, the point stands: four places, one set of hours, and nobody turning up to a locked door.