Christmas playbook · 2026 edition
Every December, church staff tell us some version of the same story. They knew Christmas was coming, and they still ran out of time.
The misses add up in ways nobody plans for. The invite video never gets filmed, so a hundred personal invitations never get sent. The landing page goes live on the 20th, after most guests have already picked where they're going.
The problem is almost never effort, and it is rarely design skill. Christmas media is a season-long project, and most churches end up running it like a series of weekly surprises. This playbook fixes the part that's actually fixable, which is the timeline.
Inside the playbook
Part one
Families settle their Christmas Eve plans early in December, often before the second Sunday. A push that starts the week of Christmas reaches people whose plans are already made.
Everything else in the playbook exists to get your invitation in front of them while that decision is still open.
Most Christmas guests come because someone they know invited them, so the highest-return move of your whole season costs almost nothing.
Email your church two or three invite graphics they can save and text to a friend. Your people are already inviting people. They just don't usually have anything to send.
Weekly work keeps coming no matter what, and surprise work will always show up on a Thursday asking to be done by Sunday. Seasonal work is the one kind you can get ahead of.
So protect your Christmas planning time the way you'd protect a meeting you can't skip, and start it eight to twelve weeks out.
You don't need a video strategy. One well-made video can carry the whole season, so pick the one your church can actually pull off.
Film it in late October or early November so there's time to edit before it posts, and let your people text it to their friends.
The schedule
Sept 7 to 20
leadership decides
Hold the theme meeting and lock the series name. Decide up front who gives input and who has the final call, so one late opinion can't reopen forty finished graphics.
Sept 21 to Oct 4
comms owner briefs
Write the full deliverables list and brief whoever makes your media on the whole season at once, rather than piece by piece. Request the series graphics and the main event package first, because everything else inherits their look.
Oct 5 to 25
designer produces
Series and main event graphics approved and in hand, with a revision round built in. Your Christmas landing page goes live by the last week of October.
Oct 26 to Nov 15
comms owner and volunteers
Film the one invite video by early November, leaving room to edit. Keep it personal and low-production, because those are the videos people actually share.
Nov 16 to Dec 6
comms owner executes
Everything physical goes to the print shop the week before Thanksgiving, because December print queues are brutal. Schedule the social pack and send your church the invite graphics.
Dec 7 to 24
the whole team
Countdown posts run the week of Christmas and everything else is already scheduled, which leaves you free to catch the stories worth telling while they're happening.
Dec 26 to Jan 10
close the loop
Send Christmas guests a specific invitation to what's next, post the recap video while the season is still warm, and write down what worked before you forget it.
Christmas work we have made
You're not disqualified, and you're not behind in any way that matters yet. Compress the early phases into one honest working session and keep the print and video deadlines where they are, because those are the two that can't move.
The schedule in the playbook tells you which weeks are load-bearing and which ones you can fold together. That's the part that's genuinely hard to work out under pressure in November.
Prefer to read the whole plan on a page first? The five-week Christmas guide is free with no form at all.
