Every December, a version of the same message arrives: it’s the 21st, can you do four mugs by Christmas Eve?
Sometimes we can. Often we can’t, and the honest answer is more useful to you in October than the hopeful one is on December 21st. So here are our real dates for the 2026 holidays, published early enough to be worth something.
PrintMyVibe presses mugs, tees and totes by hand in North York, Toronto. Production is 1-3 business days on our existing designs. Everything below is that, plus delivery, plus a sensible margin.
The dates
Hanukkah 2026 begins at sundown on Friday, December 4 and runs through Saturday, December 12. Christmas Day is Friday, December 25.
| Occasion | Comfortable | Last call |
|---|---|---|
| Hanukkah — GTA delivery | Fri Nov 20 | Fri Nov 27 |
| Hanukkah — rest of Canada | Fri Nov 13 | Fri Nov 20 |
| Christmas — GTA delivery | Fri Dec 11 | Wed Dec 16 |
| Christmas — rest of Canada | Fri Dec 4 | Fri Dec 11 |
| Bulk or corporate, 20+ pieces | Fri Nov 20 | Fri Nov 27 |
| Any fully custom design | Add 2-3 business days to the above |
“Comfortable” means it arrives without anyone thinking about it. “Last call” means we’d still take the order and expect it to land, with less room if something goes wrong.
Past last call, message us rather than assuming either way. Some weeks we have capacity and some we don’t, and we’d rather tell you the truth than take an order and hope.
Why Hanukkah is the one people miss
It starts on December 4 this year. That is three full weeks before Christmas, and it catches people out almost every time — the gift gets ordered on a Christmas timeline and arrives on night six.
If you’re buying for a household that celebrates Hanukkah, the deadline that matters is mid-to-late November, not December. Put it in your calendar now.
Why late November is worse than it looks
Black Friday is Friday, November 27 and Cyber Monday is Monday, November 30. For the week either side of those, every courier in the country is moving several times its normal volume.
Transit times published by carriers are averages measured across the year. They are not what happens in the last week of November or the second week of December. A parcel that normally takes three days across Ontario can take six.
This is the single biggest reason our recommended dates look early. It isn’t our production time — that’s stable at 1-3 business days. It’s everyone else’s.
Fully custom work needs its own runway
Ordering an existing design from the shop is a production job. Ordering a pet portrait, a logo, a photo or a phrase we haven’t printed before is an artwork job first.
That means: you send the file, we check it will print cleanly at final size, and we come back to you if it won’t. A photo that looks sharp on a phone is frequently too small to hold up at mug size, and finding that out is a conversation, not a rejection.
Budget 2-3 business days for that step on top of production. Two weeks of margin is comfortable; two days is not.
If you’re planning custom holiday gifts, start the artwork conversation in early November. It costs you nothing to have the file approved and sitting ready.
Corporate and bulk orders: November, not December
For teams, client gifts, event swag or staff thank-yous, the practical deadline is the week of November 20.
Three reasons, none of them about us being busy:
Approval takes longer than production. A logo has to go past someone. That person is in meetings. Then marketing wants the other version of the mark. The printing is the fast part.
Artwork problems surface at proof stage. A logo pulled off a website is usually too small to print cleanly at chest size. We flag that before we print forty, which is the right order of events and adds a day.
Quantity changes. Headcounts move. It’s easier to add six in November than to re-run in December.
No minimum, mixed designs within one run are fine, and larger quantities get better per-unit pricing. Send a quantity and a delivery date and we’ll quote it with a real timeline. Our corporate holiday gift guide covers what to actually order.
Left it late? What’s still possible
If it’s past last call, here’s what genuinely helps:
Pick an existing design. No artwork step, straight into production.
Choose GTA delivery over shipping if the recipient is local. It removes the least predictable part of the chain.
Use the personalization field rather than a custom design. A name or short phrase on an existing product is fast. A new illustration is not.
Ask before you order. One message with your date and postal code and we’ll tell you yes or no. A “no” in time to buy something else is worth more than a “maybe” that turns into a December 24th apology.
One thing we won’t do is take an order we don’t think will land and let you find out on the day.
What we don’t do
Gift wrapping. The gift boxes and ribbons in our product photos are styling. Everything ships in protective packaging, ready for you to wrap. Worth knowing before you’re relying on it.
Viby’s note 🐾
Viby’s rule for December: the person who ordered in November is not the person sending frantic messages on the 22nd. Be the first one. It is genuinely the entire trick.
Holiday ordering questions, answered
Get ahead of it
Shop custom mugs · Shop tote bags · Shop custom t-shirts · Ask about a bulk order