The 2026 holiday posting calendar for small businesses

Between Halloween and New Year’s Day, a small business has about a dozen dates worth a post in 2026. The ones that pay are the ones that change something for your customers: your hours, your stock or your deadlines. Schedule each post about a week before its date, and one more for the day before.

The season is also when you have the least time to post. So the plan below is built to be done once, in the second half of October, and then left alone.

These are the dates for the United States. The federal holidays are from the Office of Personnel Management’s calendar, and the others from the organisations that run them.

Hanukkah begins at sundown on Friday, December 4, and ends at nightfall on Saturday, December 12.

Most of the calendar is optional. These three are not, because a customer who gets them wrong shows up at a locked door or orders too late.

1. Your holiday hours. One post for each stretch of days you are closed or open different hours, with the dates written out.
2. Your deadlines. The last day to order, book or drop something off and still have it before the holiday.
3. A thank-you. One honest post at the end of the year, to the people who kept you busy.

A restaurant’s deadline is the last day to reserve a table or order a tray. A salon’s is the last open appointment before Christmas. An online store’s is the last day an order still arrives in time. Name the day and the hour.

Put your holiday hours on your Google Business Profile before you post them anywhere else. The profile is what a customer sees when they search your name on the day and ask whether you are open.

Google Business Profile has special hours for this: they change one day without touching your regular hours. Google’s help page recommends confirming holiday hours even when they are the same as your regular hours, so customers can tell they are accurate.

Then say the same thing in a post on the profile and on your social accounts. The page on Google Business Profile posts shows what one looks like.

Write and schedule the whole season in one sitting, then let it run.

• About a week before the date: the post that asks for something, such as an order, a booking or a visit.
• The day before: a short reminder of the same thing.
• The morning of: your hours for that day, and nothing else.

A post that goes out on the holiday itself asking for orders is already late. A customer plans a Thanksgiving table or a gift a week ahead, and that is when your post has to be in front of them.

Do not post about every date on the calendar. A greeting for a day that has nothing to do with your business or your neighbourhood reads as filler, and customers scroll past it.

Leave out an offer you cannot honour for everyone who asks. Leave out a deadline you are not sure you can meet. And write the offer’s terms into the post: the day it starts, the day it ends and what it covers.

With Spica Post, you tell the AI assistant you already use your holiday hours, your deadlines and your offers once. It drafts a post for each date and for each of your accounts, worded for that network. Nothing goes out until you approve it. After that every post is scheduled for its day.

How far ahead you can schedule depends on your plan. The pricing page has the limits.