Between Christmas and New Year, work stops in a great many businesses: the job book is empty, the phone is on voicemail, and a sheet of paper hangs on the gate. The website carries on. It accepts forms, displays opening hours that do not apply this week, and sends an acknowledgement promising a reply nobody is there to give. Yet this is exactly the week in which a lot of people finally get round to looking something up: 80 percent of people aged 16 to 74 used the internet in 2025 to search for information on goods and services (Federal Statistical Office). This article does not treat the shutdown as routine opening-hours maintenance but as a one-off, dated procedure: when the notice band goes up, what it says, how the emergency route is kept apart from the routine one, which other channels need the same message, and when the band comes down again.
A shutdown is a procedure with dates
Keeping opening hours current is a standing task: it concerns every week, it rarely changes, and it runs quietly in the background. A shutdown over the turn of the year is the opposite.
It covers a clearly bounded period, it happens once a year, and its end is fixed before it starts. Treating the two alike produces one of two mistakes: either the closure is never mentioned because the regular hours are correct, or it is written into the regular hours and is still sitting there in February. The standing task is covered in keeping opening hours and availability current. This article is about the one-off procedure beside it.
The second difference lies in the expectation the site itself creates. In normal operation the question is how fast an enquiry gets answered; what matters there is set out in answering enquiries and holding response times. During a shutdown the question is a different one: whether anybody is reading at all. An acknowledgement announcing a reply within one working day is no longer a commitment on 27 December, it is a promise the business breaks before the sender has closed the browser. The acknowledgement is not the problem; its wording is. It comes from normal operation and nobody rewrote it for the break.
In practice three dates belong together, and only one of them is the closing day. The first is the day the notice goes onto the site, early enough for someone to place a job before it. The second is the cut-off: the last day on which something new is started in the old year. It usually falls several days before the closing day, because materials, deliveries and sign-off all take time. The third is the reply date in January, stated explicitly in the notice. Without that third date you get precisely the uncertainty that fills up the voicemail box: someone who does not know when they will hear back would rather call once more.
The three dates
What belongs on the notice band
A notice band is a narrow, colour-separated strip above the page content that appears on every page and not only on the home page. That matters more than it sounds: for a trade business the home page is rarely the entry point.
Someone looking for a particular service arrives from the search engine straight on the service page and never sees the home page that day. A notice sitting only there is therefore missed by a share of visitors entirely. The same goes for a paragraph that only shows up after the third scroll.
- The period with both calendar dates and both weekdays, not just the phrase „over the holidays“
- The reply date: the first working day in January, spelled out and with its weekday
- What still runs during the break and what does not, one sentence each
- The emergency route with a number and one sentence on what it is meant for
- The cut-off for jobs that are supposed to start in the old year
- A note that form enquiries still arrive and will be answered from the stated date in order of receipt
- A dated as-of line, so it stays visible when the information was last checked
Business closure
Thursday 24 December 2026 to Monday 4 January 2027
We are back for you from Tuesday 5 January 2027.
Enquiries sent through the form still reach us and will
be answered from 5 January in order of receipt.
New jobs are accepted up to Friday 18 December.
Emergency at a running installation:
[on-call number], daily 8am to 6pm
On 25 and 26 December and on 1 January by prior
arrangement only.
As of: 16 November 2026The draft above is deliberately plain. It offers no mood, only dates, and in eight lines it answers the four questions that otherwise get asked on the phone. Technically such a band is a block that sits above the content and carries a start and an end date; which blocks are suitable and what a call to action inside one looks like is covered in the overview of conversion and CTA blocks. Only one thing really matters: the band has to come off again in a single move, otherwise it stays up.
Dates instead of „over the holidays“
The emergency route: who is reachable and what for expressly not
An emergency section without a boundary is worse than none. If all it shows is a number, that number gets used for everything: for the quote request, for moving an appointment, for the invoice from November.
Whoever then fails to pick up has damaged the very reputation the number was meant to build. The section therefore needs two halves. The first says what the on-call service is for, ideally with examples from your own trade. The second says what can expressly wait, and names the route intended for it.
The second half is the part most people leave out, because it feels like a rebuff. In fact it works the other way round: someone who reads that their quote request will be handled from 5 January puts the phone down and writes instead. Someone who reads nothing calls. How to catch missed calls in that situation without parking anyone in a queue is described in callback instead of the hold queue - the procedure there maps one to one onto a shutdown.
Scroll table sideways
| Matter | Route during the shutdown | What the page says about it |
|---|---|---|
| Danger to people, water damage, failure of a running installation | On-call service, immediately | Number, time window and one sentence of context |
| A fault without danger that can wait for the next working day | Form or email | Pointer to the reply date in January |
| Quote request, preferred appointment, callback request | Form | An acknowledgement naming the reply date in its text |
| Invoices, reminders, documents for the annual accounts | Email to bookkeeping | The address and a note that it is handled from January |
| Order or booking through the website | Keeps running | Delivery and handling times calculated with the closure |
Anyone announcing an on-call service should know first what applies on the public holidays themselves. German working time law is explicit here: employees may not be employed on Sundays and public holidays, and that runs from 0 to 24 hours (Section 9(1) of the German Working Hours Act). 25 and 26 December and 1 January are statutory holidays in every federal state. Exceptions exist, but they are enumerated rather than open: Section 10 of the act names, among others, emergency and rescue services, the guarding of operating installations, and maintaining the functioning of data networks and computer systems. Whether your own case falls under one of them is not a question for the website but for the staffing plan that precedes it.
Employees may not be employed on Sundays and public holidays from 0 to 24 hours.
Emergency during the business closure
This is what the on-call service is for:
- Failure of an installation that has to stay in service
- Escaping water, smoke, danger to people
- Damage that grows worse without intervention
This is what it is not for:
- Quotes, appointments, callbacks
- Invoices and documents
- Questions about a running job that are not urgent
We take those through the form and answer them from
Tuesday 5 January 2027.No commitment nobody can keep
Form, acknowledgement and auto-reply
Three places send text without anyone sitting next to them, and all three date from normal operation. They get forgotten regularly because they are invisible in daily work: you only see them if you submit your own form once.
That is precisely the test due before the closing day, on a phone and with a real address, not with a test entry that ends up in the bin.
The acknowledgement in the browser
The sentence that appears after sending is the only feedback anyone sees immediately. During the break it names the period and the reply date, not the regular response time. Two sentences are enough: your enquiry has arrived, the answer comes from the stated day.
The auto-reply by email
It goes to everyone who writes instead of calling, and it is often read again weeks later. That is why it needs the end date rather than the word „currently“. Whoever switches it on puts the day of switching it off straight into the calendar.
Appointment and booking forms
Calendars keep handing out slots if nobody blocks the days. The block belongs before the band goes up, otherwise the site confirms an appointment that does not exist. The first free slot in January should not be the first working day but the second.
Anyone still selling or accepting jobs during the break should count in the periods that start running with them. The withdrawal period in consumer contracts runs regardless of the closure, and an order placed on 28 December binds exactly as one placed on 28 March; what that means for form and button is set out in the right of withdrawal and the cancel button. Delivery times work the same way in the other direction: a figure given in working days means something different this week than it does in November, and leaving it unchanged creates a delay that ends up on your own page.
So that the changeover does not turn into tinkering, it belongs somewhere a second person can follow it. Which fields a form can output in its acknowledgement and where that text lives is described in the guide to the editor and pages; how to build a form in normal operation so that as little as possible has to change for the break is covered in using contact forms properly.
Who the website never reaches
The website is the channel with the widest reach, and in the quiet week its share is if anything higher than usual: 80 percent of people aged 16 to 74 used the internet in 2025 to search for information on goods and services (Federal Statistical Office). Someone wanting to know on 29 December whether a business is open looks at the site first and only then picks up the phone. That is the good news: a band that goes up early enough absorbs the bulk of the questions before they are asked.
The other side of the same statistic is smaller but not small. A good 3 percent of people aged 16 to 74 in Germany had never used the internet in 2025, which is just under 2.1 million people (Federal Statistical Office). In the 65 to 74 age group around one in ten was offline, that is 10 percent (Federal Statistical Office). For a trade, care or service business with older customers that is not a footnote but the share of callers who will only learn about the break if somebody tells them. The recorded message on the answering machine and the notice on the door are therefore not folklore but the second and third channel for the same message.
Scroll table sideways
| Channel | Who it reaches | What has to be on it |
|---|---|---|
| Notice band on every page | Everyone who checks before calling | Period, reply date, emergency route |
| Recorded message on the answering machine | Anyone who calls directly, including people with no internet access | The same period and the same reply date, spoken |
| Notice on the door or gate | Anyone standing outside the building | Period and reply date, readable from two metres |
| Auto-reply by email | Anyone who writes instead of calling | Period, reply date and the emergency route |
| Entry in map services and directories | Anyone searching via the map rather than the site | Special opening hours for the days affected |
The last point is the one that slips most often, because it sits outside your own site. A map service showing „open“ for 28 December sends people to a locked door, no matter how well the band on the website is worded. Special opening hours can usually be entered there in advance. How to tell the return from all these channels apart afterwards is described in making phone calls from the website measurable.
Carried-over leave, minimum leave and the plan in the team
A shutdown between the years usually works out for the team because there is leftover leave sitting there anyway.
The basis for the arithmetic is in the German Federal Leave Act: annual leave amounts to at least 24 working days (Section 3(1) of the German Federal Leave Act), and working days under the same provision are all calendar days that are not Sundays or public holidays. On a five-day week the statutory minimum therefore corresponds to 20 working days; many contracts sit above that. How many days a break from 24 December to 4 January actually costs depends on the holidays that fall inside it.
- 25 and 26 December and 1 January are statutory holidays in every federal state and consume no day of leave
- Whether a shutdown can be imposed depends on the employment contract, collective agreement and co-determination; the announcement belongs inside the business early, long before it reaches the website
- Anyone rostered for the on-call service needs their days elsewhere - that is a duty roster, not a subclause in the notice band
- The first working day in January is not a normal day: it belongs to the backlog that built up during the break and should not be filled with appointments
The second reason the break sits at the turn of the year is a deadline. Leave has in principle to be taken within the current calendar year; if it is carried over, it has to be granted and taken within the first three months of the following calendar year (Section 7(3) of the German Federal Leave Act). In practice that means anything not taken by 31 March is as a rule forfeited. A shutdown between the years clears that remainder in a planned way instead of finding it again in February as a bottleneck. For the website this connection matters only indirectly - but it explains why the period is so rarely moved once it has been fixed.
What the break costs inside the business
The schedule from November to January
The order matters more than the thoroughness of any single step. Start in November and you have six small moves; start on 23 December and you have one hectic afternoon and forget the auto-reply.
The plan below fits most businesses and can be extended with your own specifics - anyone also running a year-end season should put it next to the preparation for that, described in preparing the website for the year-end season.
- Mid November: fix the period, the cut-off and the reply date and agree them in the team
- End of November: put up the notice band, create the emergency section, proofread both on a phone
- Early December: switch the form acknowledgement and the auto-reply to the period, block appointment and booking calendars, enter special opening hours in directories
- A week before the closing day: record the answering machine message, print the door notice, check delivery and handling times
- Last working day: postpone open enquiries to January with a short message, confirm the on-call roster, switch on the out-of-office note
- First working day in January: remove the band, switch off the auto-reply, open the calendars, work through the backlog in order of receipt
Six steps, five of which take under ten minutes each - provided the change to the website is a move you make yourself and not a ticket. That is exactly what an editor owned by the business is for: set the band, enter the date, publish, and take it back down in the same minute in January. What is included is set out in the overview of the features and in the pricing; what the route from a change to a published page looks like is described in how it works.
When the band stays up in January
The costliest mistake in this procedure does not happen in December but in January. A notice band still saying „we are back for you from 5 January“ on 12 January tells every visitor that nobody has looked at this page for a week.
The same goes for the auto-reply still reporting a shutdown in February, and for the blocked appointment calendar that no longer takes a booking. Taking it down is therefore not an afterthought but an appointment of its own with an owner of its own.
- The notice band is removed, not merely hidden
- The form acknowledgement names the regular response time again
- The auto-reply in the mailbox is switched off
- The answering machine message has been recorded afresh
- Appointment and booking calendars are open again
- Special opening hours in maps and directories are reset
- The notice on the door or gate has been taken down
- The backlog from the break is worked through and nobody is waiting longer than the date printed on the band
So that taking it down does not hang on one person, it belongs in the same allocation of roles as any other change to the site; what that looks like in a team is described in maintaining the website as a team: roles and permissions. And because nobody is watching during the break, the technical side deserves a look: whether the site was reachable at all while the business was closed is answered only by monitoring that was running at the time, covered in monitoring website downtime and availability. If you would like to walk through the schedule together once, the way in is via contact.
The first working day