How to close your Shopify store for Christmas without switching it off

Don't hide the whole shop. Leave it open and stop customers choosing the days you're closed. Then a customer can still order on 22 December for collection on 5 January, and nobody books a cake for Boxing Day.

Shopify has no setting for this by itself, because it doesn't ask customers for a date at all. You need a date picker that knows your closed days.

Each of these works, but each has a cost over a busy season:

• A password page. Hides the whole shop, so new customers and search engines can't browse it, and nobody can order for after the break or buy a gift card.
• Shopify's Pause and Build plan. Turns checkout off for the whole store. It's a plan change with its own monthly fee, meant for longer breaks, and it stops every order, not just the closed days.
• An announcement bar. Tells customers you're closed, but doesn't stop anyone ordering for 26 December.
• Products set to draft, or stock to 0 with overselling off. Stops the orders, including the ones for January you'd have taken.
• “Write your date in the order note.” Customers write “Boxing Day” anyway, and you check every order by hand.

With Blackout Dates, customers pick a date before checkout, and your closed days can't be picked. Setting up Christmas takes a few minutes:

1. Add the app and switch on the Date Picker Embed in your theme. The setup guide shows each click.
2. Open Store Closed Dates, choose Block a date range and pick your break, say 24 December to 2 January. Or use Add public holidays to tick the UK bank holidays from GOV.UK's list.
3. Check your prep days on Settings, Timing & hours. They decide how far ahead customers must order, so they set the last day to order before your break.

The Free plan covers 10 closed dates. A break from 24 December to 2 January is exactly 10 days, so it fits when you have no other closed dates coming up. A weekday you already close every week doesn't count. Plus and Pro are unlimited.

Prep days count whole days. A last order time in the Order timing card on Settings, Timing & hours, means an order after, say, 2pm counts from the next day, so a late order on 21 December can't squeeze in for the 23rd.

Add the Order-by Deadline Banner to your shop in the theme editor. It shows the last day to order before you close, worked out from your prep days, so you never have to update it by hand. On Plus too, a Store Closure Notice says when you're closed, and Storefront Messages in the app sets it up. For a slim strip near your header instead, add the Closure Announcement Bar block in the theme editor.

On Store Closed Dates, click your break in the list and name it “Christmas”. The Closure Announcement Bar then names it, and adding {closure} to the Order-by Deadline Banner's wording in the theme editor, as in “before our {closure} closure”, makes it say “before our Christmas closure”.

Closing a date only stops new orders for it. Orders already placed keep their date. On Pro, the Closure Impact page lists the orders booked on your closures, and on any plan a Shopify Flow trigger can email you when a closure lands on a booking.

Christmas Day 2026 is a Friday, so many shops close from Thursday 24 December to Monday 28 December, or into the new year. Dates to plan around:

Set it up before the Christmas orders start, so nobody books a day you're closed.