4 Holiday Shipping Deadlines, USPS Announces This Week
If you thought August was early for stores to put out their Halloween displays, then you probably don’t want to hear that Christmas decorations are already hitting shelves in early September. And it appears that the United States Postal Service (USPS) has gotten the memo, as they’ve just released their 2025 holiday mailing and shipping dates.
RELATED: The #1 Way Tariffs Are Affecting Your Mail, Says the USPS.
Sending packages around the holidays will be more expensive this year.
As Best Life recently reported, the USPS is raising mail prices for the holidays. The changes will be in effect from Oct. 5, 2025, to Jan. 18, 2026. Some of the most pertinent retail price hikes are:
- USPS Ground Advantage service: Increasing by 40 to 50 cents, depending on mailing zone
- Priority Mail: Increasing by 40 to 90 cents
- Priority Mail Express: Increasing by $1.10 to $2.00
Here are the USPS’s holiday shipping deadlines.
If you want your packages to arrive at their destination by Dec. 25 this year, here’s when you’ll need to get them in the mail, according to a Sept. 17 USPS announcement:
- USPS Ground Advantage service: Dec. 17
- First-Class Mail: Dec. 17
- Priority Mail: Dec. 18
- Priority Mail Express: Dec. 20
These dates apply to the 48 contiguous U.S. states. The only difference for Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Territories is that the deadline for USPS Ground Advantage service is Dec. 16. For international and military mail deadlines, you can visit this page.
It’s worth noting that this year’s deadlines are all one day earlier than last year’s, due in part to the USPS getting rid of its guaranteed overnight delivery service, Priority Mail Express Next Day, this past April.
RELATED: USPS Is Closing 20+ Post Offices This Month.
Holiday stamps are also here.
The USPS is also revealing its holiday Forever stamps nice and early. This year’s collection of four Holiday Cheer stamps is inspired by the time-honored tradition of decorating for the season with fruit, flowers, and greenery.
Other recently released stamps include those honoring President Jimmy Carter and humanitarian Elie Wiesel.
And Operation Santa is now accepting letters.
Finally, the USPS also announced that its Operation Santa is accepting letters from children across the country as of Sept. 15.
Here’s how the program works: Families in need mail in their holiday wishes, and generous participants can then “adopt” these letters and fill the anonymous requests. Here are the key dates for the program this year:
- Nov. 3: Registration opens for adopters
- Nov. 17: Letter adoption begins
- Dec. 6: Last call to submit letters
- Dec. 13: Last call for adopters to ship gifts
“For more than a century, USPS Operation Santa has brought communities together to make the holidays brighter,” said Sheila Holman, USPS marketing vice president, in a press release. “Each year, we receive far more letters than we have adopters, and this year we want to change that – especially by encouraging participants to adopt family letters, which makes it possible to fulfill the wishes of an entire household at once.”