Christmas Day runs 49% below normal. Three days later runs 48% above. Every major holiday has the same shape, and most send schedules get it exactly backwards.
Ask a floor manager about the holidays and you'll hear some version of "nobody pays in December." It's half right. We laid a random pull of payments set up through Resolvah portals on the calendar around every major holiday, comparing each day with what that weekday and month normally produces. The holiday itself is dead. The days after are not, and on most of them people pay more than usual.
Each figure is that day's payment setups against usual for that weekday and month.
Winter holidays delay money. People spend the day with family, and then, two or three days later, they catch up. Christmas gives back +48% on day three; Thanksgiving +53%. New Year is the exception: the surge comes before, when people close out the year, and the recovery after is weak because January as a whole is the quietest month.
Summer holidays are different. Labor Day and Independence Day are dead on the day and stay soft after. Nothing comes back. That matches the wider pattern in the data: the autumn is the softest season, and a holiday in it is a hole, not a delay.
Send the day after, not the day before.
Soft touches through the first ten days (the month's normal trough). Asks on the 16th through the 23rd, timed to the evening. Quiet on the 24th, 25th and 26th. The big send on the 27th, local afternoon. A year-end message on the 29th or 30th. Nothing on January 1, and a modest reminder on the 3rd or 4th. Then accept that January is quiet and plan the real push for the refund window in February.
The full holiday table, along with the day-of-month, weekday and month curves, is at resolvah.com/reports/payment-calendar.
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