The Gap Nobody Configures
Phone systems handle public holidays well, because public holidays are a known list that can be loaded once. They handle business closures badly, because a business closure is not a public holiday and nothing in the system knows about it unless somebody puts it there.
That distinction is the whole problem. Christmas Day and Boxing Day take care of themselves in almost any properly configured system. The twenty-ninth, thirtieth and thirty-first of December do not, because as far as the system is concerned they are a Tuesday, a Wednesday and a Thursday, and the hours you set in March still apply.
Why this specific failure is invisible
A call that rings out and is abandoned is not recorded as anything. It does not appear as a missed call, because in many configurations nothing was ever properly presented. It does not appear in a report, because from the system's point of view nothing happened. The only trace it leaves is a small unexplained difference in January revenue, which nobody attributes to the phones. This is why businesses can repeat the same December for a decade without ever identifying the cause.
The 2026 to 2027 Dates
| Date | Status | What it means for your phones |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday 24 December | Ordinary working day, part-day holiday arrangements in SA and NT | Most businesses finish early. Set the actual finish time rather than the usual one. |
| Friday 25 December | Christmas Day, public holiday | Handled automatically if your holiday list is loaded. |
| Saturday 26 December | Boxing Day, falling on a weekend | Usually already outside your hours. |
| Monday 28 December | Substitute public holiday in most states and territories | Only handled if your holiday list is current. Check it specifically. |
| Tue 29, Wed 30, Thu 31 December | Ordinary working days | The gap. Your system treats these as normal unless you tell it otherwise. |
| Thursday 31 December | Part-day holiday arrangements in SA and NT | Another one to set explicitly if you trade in those jurisdictions. |
| Friday 1 January 2027 | New Year's Day, public holiday | Handled automatically. |
| Monday 4 January 2027 | First ordinary working day | Your reopening date, and the busiest inbound day of the quarter. |
Public holidays differ between states and territories and substitute days are declared separately by each jurisdiction, so load your own state's official list rather than a national default, and set them per location if you operate across borders.
October: Four Decisions
The decisions take longer than the configuration, and they need people who will be on leave in December.
| Decide | Get to this level of specificity |
|---|---|
| Closed, or quieter? | Per day, not for the period. Many businesses are closed on the twenty-ninth and open on the thirtieth, and that is fine as long as the phone knows. |
| Who is available? | Names against dates. "Some of us will be around" is not an answer, and it is the answer that produces a fortnight of everyone half-watching their phone. |
| What is urgent? | A concrete description a caller can match themselves against. See the section below. |
| What do customers need to know? | Usually three things: the last date for orders or bookings, the closure dates, and the reopening date. All three, in November. |
The reason October matters more than the configuration does
In most small businesses one person understands the phone system, and there is a good chance they finish on the nineteenth. Doing this in October means the work is done calmly by the person who knows how, tested twice, and does not depend on somebody being reachable on Christmas Eve. It is the same amount of work either way. The difference is entirely in who is available to do it and how much of it gets skipped.
November: Tell People
Announcing a closure in late December reaches the people ringing in late December. Announcing it in November reaches the people who were going to ring in the second week of December and would prefer to sort things out beforehand, which is better for them and usually brings work forward rather than losing it.
Three things belong in the announcement, and the first is the one businesses forget. The last date for orders, bookings, quotes or anything with a lead time, because half of your December enquiries are people trying to work out exactly that. The closure dates, day by day if the pattern is irregular. And the reopening date, stated as an actual date rather than "the new year".
Send it wherever your customers actually are: an email, an SMS to the people who deal with you by SMS, a line on the invoice, and a note on the website. Repeat it in the first week of December for the people who did not read it in November, which is most of them.
December: Configure and Test
Twenty minutes if October went well. Do it in the first week, not the last.
| Step | Detail |
|---|---|
| 1. Public holidays | Twelve months from your own state's official list, per location. Confirm the substitute day on Monday 28 December is present. |
| 2. Your own closure days | The twenty-ninth to the thirty-first, and any other day you are shut that is not a public holiday. This step is the one that fixes the gap, and it is the one always missed. |
| 3. Early finishes | Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve usually finish early. Set the real time. |
| 4. Separate recordings | Closure, reduced hours and urgent path as three separate recordings, so you can switch between them without re-recording anything at short notice. |
| 5. The urgent route | A specific option routed to the on-call group through the system, two people minimum, never a diversion to a personal mobile. |
| 6. The end of the line | An AI answer that takes details and books a January time, a callback commitment with a real time, or at minimum a transcribed mailbox with a named owner. Never an unbounded ring. |
| 7. Automatic reversion | Set the reopening date so normal routing returns by itself on the fourth, rather than depending on somebody remembering while still on holiday. |
| 8. Test twice | Preview the dates if your system supports it, then ring your own number in mid December and listen to the whole thing. Something always changes between the two. |
The Urgent Path, and the Roster
Two mistakes are near universal here and both are easy to avoid.
Do not use the word urgent as the test. "If this is urgent, press 1" sorts nobody, because every caller believes their situation qualifies, and from where they are sitting it usually does. Use a concrete description they can match themselves against: "if you have no hot water or a burst pipe", "if a patient needs to be seen today", "if your site has stopped", "if you have a tenant with no working toilet". Specific wording sorts accurately and, importantly, nobody feels turned away.
Do not run an informal roster. Everybody keeping half an eye on the phone means everybody is on call for a fortnight and nobody actually is. Write down four things in November: who is on, which days, what they are expected to respond to, and what they are paid or given in lieu. Australian employees can refuse unreasonable contact outside working hours and the provisions cover small business employers, which is considerably easier to honour when the roster is explicit than when it is a shared assumption. Our note on the right to disconnect and your phone system covers it.
Route through the system, never divert to a mobile
Diverting the business number to somebody's personal phone is the reflex answer and it causes three problems that outlast January. Nothing said over the break is recorded, so anything agreed exists only in memory. The customer saves that number and rings it directly for years afterwards, at hours nobody agreed to. And there is no way to hand over when that person is genuinely unavailable, so the whole arrangement rests on one handset being charged and in range. Routing to the on-call person through the phone system takes about the same effort and keeps the number, the record and the fallback.
What to Actually Say
| Situation | Wording that works |
|---|---|
| Closed, with an urgent path | "Thanks for calling Northline Electrical. We are closed from Friday the eighteenth of December and we reopen on Monday the fourth of January. If you have no power or an electrical fault that cannot wait, press 1 to reach our on-call electrician. For anything else, leave your name and number and we will ring you back on the fourth." |
| Closed, AI answering | "Thanks for calling Braddon Consulting. Our office is closed from Wednesday the twenty-third of December and we reopen on Monday the fourth of January. Stay on the line and our assistant can answer questions, take your details, or book you a time in January." |
| Open, with fewer people | "Thanks for calling Kirra Supplies. Between Christmas and New Year we are open nine until two with a smaller team, so it may take us a little longer to answer. Stay on the line and somebody will be with you." |
| Open normally | Say so explicitly: "We are open as usual over the Christmas period, including the twenty-ninth, thirtieth and thirty-first." This is worth saying out loud, because your callers are assuming the opposite. |
Three rules. Give the reopening date in words rather than saying "the new year", because a customer who knows the date will wait and a customer who does not will assume the worst and ring elsewhere. Give the last working day as well, since customers planning their own December need both ends. And record it in the voice of somebody who still works at the business, which is a more common oversight than it should be.
During the Break
Three things worth doing while the business is quiet, none of which take long.
Somebody looks at the messages every second day. Not to action them, just to spot the one that actually cannot wait. Ten minutes, and it is the difference between a good save and a complaint on the fourth.
The on-call person confirms the path works on day one. Ring the main number, press the urgent option, and confirm it reaches them. Configuration that was tested in early December can be affected by a change made on the twenty-second.
Nobody changes anything. The most common cause of a broken holiday configuration is somebody helpfully adjusting it on the twenty-third. If a change is genuinely needed, make it and then test the whole flow, not just the part that changed.
January: The Most Predictable Peak of the Year
For most businesses the first working day back carries more inbound calls than any other day of the quarter, and unlike most peaks you know the date months in advance.
| Do this | Why |
|---|---|
| Give the backlog a named owner and a stated time | Decided in December. That person works the accumulated messages and callbacks first thing and is not also expected to answer the live phone, which is the arrangement that usually fails. |
| Widen the ring groups for three days | Everybody who can answer, answers. Narrow them again on the Thursday. Two minutes to change, and it absorbs most of the spike. |
| Turn the holiday message off before opening | A closure message playing at nine on the fourth sends away exactly the customers who waited for you rather than going elsewhere. |
| Ring the oldest callers first | Whoever rang on the twenty-ninth has waited longest and is closest to having gone elsewhere already. |
| Read what came in, in week two | Holiday messages are an unusually honest sample of what customers want when nobody is there to shape the conversation. Half an hour, and it usually changes something. |
If You Get Busier, Not Quieter
Retail, hospitality, venues, tourism, emergency trades, veterinary, roadside, aged care and anyone whose customers are at home rather than at work all have the opposite problem, and the same calendar work applies in reverse.
Hours
Set holiday trading hours explicitly, per day. Trading on a public holiday is a configuration, not the absence of one.
Groups
Widen the ring groups, because the usual answerers are partly on leave. Two minutes, and it prevents most missed calls.
Spike
Plan for the busiest hour last year, not the busiest day. Holiday demand is spiky rather than uniformly high.
Take the repetitive calls out as well. Are you open, what time do you close today, do you have this, where do I park, and can I still book for the twenty-ninth account for a large share of December volume and can be handled without a person. And set special hours on your Google Business Profile, because a significant number of people check whether you are open without ever ringing, and an absent listing sends them to a competitor with a present one.
Seven Recurring Mistakes
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|---|
| The twenty-ninth to the thirty-first left as ordinary working days | Add your own closure dates. These are not public holidays and nothing knows about them unless you say so. |
| "We will reopen in the new year" | Give the actual date. The most common failure and the easiest to fix. |
| A mailbox nobody opens until the fourth | Transcription with a named owner, a callback commitment, or an AI answer that deals with the caller. |
| The business diverted to a personal mobile | Route through the system to the on-call group instead. |
| The holiday message still playing on the sixth | Set automatic reversion on the reopening date. |
| The Monday 28 December substitute missing | Reload the holiday list from your state's official source. |
| An unbounded ring anywhere in the flow | Every path gets a defined end. This is the silent, expensive one. |
How We Run It
VOCPhone treats holiday scheduling as configuration rather than a paid extra: public holidays by state, your own closure dates as a separate list, multiple recordings you can switch between, an urgent route to a named on-call group, and automatic reversion to normal routing on your reopening date. None of it requires anybody to be at a desk on the twenty-ninth.
The part that helps most is doing it early with somebody who has watched it go wrong in other businesses. We run the holiday setup with customers from October, preview the dates to test it, and check it again in mid December, because in almost every business something changes between those two points. If you would rather the after hours calls were dealt with than collected, the AI answer takes details, handles the questions people actually ask in December, and books January times while nobody is there.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the public holidays over the 2026 to 2027 Christmas period?
Christmas Day is Friday 25 December 2026 and Boxing Day is Saturday 26 December 2026. Because Boxing Day falls on a weekend, most states and territories observe a substitute public holiday on Monday 28 December. New Year's Day is Friday 1 January 2027, and Monday 4 January is the first ordinary working day of the year for most businesses. Public holidays differ between states and territories, and substitute days in particular are declared separately by each jurisdiction, so load your own state's official list rather than a national default and set them per location if you trade across borders. South Australia and the Northern Territory also have part-day arrangements on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. The days that actually cause the trouble, though, are not the public holidays at all. Tuesday 29, Wednesday 30 and Thursday 31 December are ordinary working days, which means your phone system treats them exactly like any other Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday unless you explicitly tell it otherwise. That is where the calls get lost, because half the country is closed, customers cannot tell who, and a business that has not set those days will simply ring out.
Why do businesses lose calls between Christmas and New Year?
Because public holidays and business closures are two different things, and phone systems handle them differently. Public holidays are a known list that gets loaded once and then works. A business closure is not a public holiday, so nothing in the system knows about it unless somebody puts it there. Christmas Day and Boxing Day therefore take care of themselves in almost any properly configured system, while the twenty-ninth, thirtieth and thirty-first of December do not, because as far as the system is concerned they are an ordinary Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and the hours you set back in March still apply. A caller who is genuinely unsure whether you are trading rings, hears eleven rings and nothing else, concludes you are shut, and rings the next name on the list. What makes this failure so persistent is that it is completely invisible: a call that rings out and is abandoned is not recorded as a missed call, does not appear in any report, and leaves no trace except a small unexplained difference in January revenue that nobody attributes to the phones. Businesses can repeat the same December for a decade without identifying the cause.
When should I set up my phone system for the holidays?
Decide in October, tell customers in November, configure in the first week of December, and test again in the middle of the month. The configuration itself is about twenty minutes; the decisions are what take time, because working out who is on call, what counts as urgent and whether you are genuinely closed on the twenty-ninth needs conversations with people, and those conversations get much slower in December when half the participants are already on leave. There is also a practical reason that October beats December in most small businesses: exactly one person tends to understand the phone system, and there is a reasonable chance they finish work on the nineteenth. Doing it early means the work is done calmly by the person who knows how, can be tested twice, and does not depend on anybody being reachable on Christmas Eve. Telling customers in November rather than late December matters for a different reason. A notice that appears on the twenty-second only reaches people ringing on the twenty-second, while a November notice reaches the people who were going to ring in the second week of December and would rather sort things out beforehand, which frequently brings work forward instead of losing it.
What should I tell customers before closing for Christmas?
Three things, and the first is the one most businesses forget. The last date for orders, bookings, quotes or anything with a lead time, because a large share of your December enquiries are people trying to work out exactly that, and publishing it removes those calls entirely while also protecting your own December. The closure dates, day by day if the pattern is irregular, since a business closed on the twenty-ninth but open on the thirtieth needs to say so or nobody will guess it. And the reopening date, stated as an actual date rather than as "the new year", because a customer who knows you reopen on Monday the fourth of January will wait, while a customer who does not has no way of telling whether you mean the fourth or the nineteenth and will assume the worst. Send it wherever your customers actually are: email, an SMS to the people who deal with you by SMS, a line on the invoice, and a note on the website. Then repeat it in the first week of December for the people who did not read it in November, which will be most of them. Also set special hours on your Google Business Profile, since many people check without ringing at all.
How should urgent calls be handled over the Christmas break?
Two things, and both are commonly done badly. First, do not use the word urgent as the test. "If this is urgent, press 1" sorts nobody, because every caller believes their situation qualifies and, from where they are sitting, it usually does. Use a concrete description the caller can match themselves against instead: if you have no hot water or a burst pipe, if a patient needs to be seen today, if your site has stopped, if you have a tenant with no working toilet. Specific wording sorts accurately, and nobody feels they were turned away. Second, do not run an informal roster. Everybody keeping half an eye on the phone means everybody is on call for a fortnight and nobody actually is, which is worse for customers and is the arrangement most likely to cost you a good staff member in February. Write down four things in November: who is on, which days, what they are expected to respond to, and what they are paid or given in lieu. Australian employees can refuse unreasonable contact outside working hours and the provisions cover small business employers, which is much easier to honour when the roster is explicit rather than a shared assumption.
Should I divert the office phone to my mobile over the holidays?
No. It is the reflex answer, it takes about the same effort as doing it properly, and it causes three problems that outlast January. Nothing said over the break is recorded, so anything agreed about a job, a price or a date exists only in somebody's memory, which becomes a problem the first time it is disputed. The customer saves that number and rings it directly for years afterwards, at hours nobody agreed to, and no amount of publishing the business number later undoes it; this is the mechanism by which a business's phone identity quietly migrates into one person's private handset. And there is no fallback, because when that person is genuinely unavailable, driving, out of coverage or on another call, the arrangement simply stops working and the caller reaches nothing. Route to the on-call person through the phone system instead, with at least two people in the group. The business number stays the business number, outbound calls still present it, the record exists, and if the first person cannot take it the call goes somewhere rather than nowhere. The setup effort is comparable and the difference persists long after the holiday.
How do I prepare for the first day back in January?
Treat it as the most predictable peak of the year, because for most businesses the first working day back carries more inbound calls than any other day of the quarter and, unlike most peaks, you know the date months ahead. Five things, all decided in December rather than on the day. Give the backlog a named owner and a stated time, and make sure that person is not also expected to answer the live phone, which is the arrangement that usually fails. Widen the ring groups for the first three days so everybody who can answer does, then narrow them again on the Thursday; it takes two minutes to change and absorbs most of the spike. Turn the holiday message off before you open rather than after, because a closure message playing at nine on the fourth sends away exactly the customers who waited for you instead of going elsewhere. Ring the oldest callers first, since whoever rang on the twenty-ninth has waited longest and is closest to having already gone somewhere else. And in the second week, spend half an hour reading what came in, because holiday messages are an unusually honest sample of what customers want when nobody is there to shape the conversation.
What if my business gets busier over Christmas rather than closing?
The same calendar work applies in reverse, and it matters just as much for retail, hospitality, venues, tourism, emergency trades, veterinary, roadside assistance, aged care and anyone whose customers are at home rather than at work. Set holiday trading hours explicitly and per day, because trading on a public holiday with different hours is a specific configuration rather than the absence of one, and leaving the system to guess reliably produces the wrong answer. Widen your ring groups, since the people who normally answer are partly on leave, and add people who would not usually take those calls; two minutes of work that prevents most of the missed calls. Plan for the busiest hour last year rather than the busiest day, because holiday demand is spiky rather than uniformly high. Take the repetitive calls out, since are you open, what time do you close today, do you have this, where do I park and can I still book for the twenty-ninth make up a large share of December volume and can be handled without a person. Offer a callback that keeps their place, because holding is tolerated even less at this time of year. And set special hours on your Google Business Profile, which takes five minutes per location.
