Peak Holiday Season Is One Day Longer than Last Year

Online sellers get a reprieve this holiday shopping season, though only by one day. Typically the retail industry looks at the number of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day as the crucial period of peak season.

Many shoppers used to wait until Black Friday to search for deals and get into the holiday mood, though thanks to online and mobile shopping, Thanksgiving now kicks off peak shopping.

In some years, the peak period is longer than others. The years 2019 and 2013 saw the shortest, with Thanksgiving falling late - November 28th. That won't happen again until 2024 (see the table on TimeandDate.com).

The longest peak period in recent history was in 2018 when Thanksgiving fell on November 22. That gave retailers lots of time to appeal to shoppers with holiday promotions, but Thanksgiving won't fall that early again until 2029, according to TimeandDate.com.

Last year, Thanksgiving fell on November 26th, and this year, the holiday falls a day earlier, on November 25.

That one extra day over last year may not help much, however. If you haven't started holiday shopping by October this year, some may consider you a procrastinator given the supply-chain issues impacting availability of goods and the expected carrier delays in getting orders to shoppers' front doors. 

Speaking of October, ... it seems Halloween has become a bigger holiday than it used to be. Should we also be counting the days between Labor Day (always the first Monday in September) and Halloween, which always falls on October 31 to see if merchants of spooky paraphernalia have a shorter or longer season? Scary thought!

Given the shipping delays expected by many to occur again this holiday season, are you going to trust shipping carrier cutoff times? How are you planning to manage customer expectations? And are the venues on which you sell doing anything to accommodate for the challenges ahead?

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