We have aggregated, with permission, twelve years of customer holiday bottle designs across hundreds of families. The patterns are consistent enough to call them rules. The strongest holiday labels do not read as holiday labels.
Restraint wins
The Christmas labels that survive into the second year are the ones that do not have a wreath, do not have a poinsettia, do not have a ribbon graphic, and do not say MERRY CHRISTMAS. The Christmas labels that survive are the ones that read as family labels and happen to be on the table at Christmas. The label is not the moment; the moment is the moment.
What the customer wants when they say they want a Christmas label
Almost always what the customer wants is a family label, designed with the dignity of an estate wine, that happens to ship in early December and gets opened on Christmas Eve. They are not asking for a Christmas label. They are asking for a label they can be proud of, on a holiday they take seriously. The studio's job is to gently guide the customer toward the family-label brief.
The exception
Some families do want a holiday-specific label, with a small foil pine sprig at the corner of the crest or a Latin Christmas phrase in the quote line. These designs work when they are quiet. A pine sprig in foil at five millimeters reads as elegant. A pine sprig in green ink at three centimeters reads as a souvenir. The studio's typography defaults keep the customer in the elegant zone unless they actively override them.
Lead time
Christmas orders should be placed by November 25 to arrive comfortably by mid-December. We can rush orders placed through December 5 with concierge delivery. Past December 5 we begin pushing to January and recommend the customer designate the bottle as a Twelfth Night or New Year's Eve label instead.