- The date
- The seller's own estimate of the last day to order for delivery in time
- The rule
- 16 CFR Part 435 sets deadlines for shipping an online order
- If it can't ship on time
- The seller must either let you choose (wait, or cancel for a prompt refund) or cancel the order itself, with a prompt refund
- USPS, Christmas 2026
- For expected delivery before December 25 within the lower 48 states, USPS recommends sending by December 17 (Ground Advantage, First-Class Mail), December 18 (Priority Mail) or December 19 (Priority Mail Express)
Every December a familiar line appears on shop after shop: order by a certain date, and it will arrive for Christmas. It reads like one promise about your doorstep, but it joins two moments, the day the shop hands your parcel to a carrier and the day the parcel reaches you, and the federal rule for mail and online orders covers only the first. Knowing which one you are looking at tells you what to ask before you pay, and what you are owed if things slip.
What the rule covers
The Federal Trade Commission's Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule is 16 CFR Part 435. Its text in the electronic Code of Federal Regulations, up to date as of October 15, 2026, goes back to an amendment published on September 17, 2014 (79 FR 55615). The rule defines shipment as “the act by which the merchandise is physically placed in the possession of the carrier” (§435.1(e)). A seller may not ask for your order unless it has “a reasonable basis to expect that it will be able to ship” within the time it states, or within thirty days if no time is clearly and conspicuously stated (§435.2(a)(1)).
The FTC's business guide explains what a reasonable basis is: information the seller has “at the time of making the representation” that “would under the circumstances satisfy a reasonable and prudent businessperson, acting in good faith, that the representation is true”. It also has a sentence every shop with a fast promise should read twice: “If you represent that you ship in 48 hours most of the time, you will be required to ship or provide notification of delay in 48 hours all the time.”
Where arrival stands
The FTC's business guide to the rule, as it stood in October 2026, does not use the words “holiday”, “Christmas” or “arrive” even once. Our reading, which is not legal advice, is that a promise about arrival falls instead under the FTC Act's general ban on “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce” (15 U.S.C. §45(a)(1)), a standard that names no dates. The guide also notes that “State law enforcement agencies can take action for violating state consumer protection laws.”
The carrier's side of the calendar
The Postal Service publishes its own holiday dates. In its release of September 22, 2026, for expected delivery before December 25 within the contiguous United States, USPS lists “USPS Ground Advantage service: Dec. 17”, “First-Class Mail: Dec. 17”, “Priority Mail: Dec. 18” and “Priority Mail Express: Dec. 19”, and its date page adds: “Actual delivery date may vary and is based on origin, destination, Post Office™ acceptance time, and other conditions.” The same page warns that “Hanukkah (Dec. 4 - Dec. 12) is earlier this year so please adjust accordingly.” These dates are for mail sent within the country; for parcels coming into the US from abroad the page lists none, so a seller shipping from abroad has no USPS date to count back from. Where there is a carrier's date, a shop's order-by date has to come before it, because the shop first needs its own days to pack and post.
Google keeps the same two parts apart. A merchant gives it a handling time and a transit time, and the “arrives by” date it shows shoppers is “maximum handling days + maximum transit days”, counted in business days. For the free and fast shipping annotations in Shopping ads and free listings, Google tells merchants: “The shipping speed you add to Merchant Center must match what's on your online store. If you can't match it exactly, overestimate the delivery time in Merchant Center.”
If your order is running late
If a seller can't ship within the time it promised, or within thirty days if it promised none, it must offer you, without being asked, “an option either to consent to a delay in shipping or to cancel the buyer's order and receive a prompt refund” (§435.2(b)(1)). It has to do so within a reasonable time after it learns it can't ship, and no later than the original deadline. The offer must give a definite revised shipping date, or say plainly that the seller can't name one (§435.2(b)(1)(i)).
If the new date is no more than thirty days after the original deadline, silence counts as consent: to cancel, your answer has to reach the seller before the new date passes and before the order ships (§435.2(b)(1)(ii)). If the delay is longer, or no date is given, the order is treated as canceled unless the seller ships within thirty days of the original deadline before you cancel, or you agree to the delay within those thirty days (§435.2(b)(1)(iii)). Instead of offering the choice, the seller may cancel the order itself: it must tell you within a reasonable time after it learns it can't ship, and send a prompt refund (§435.2(b)(4)). A prompt refund means one sent within seven working days, or within one billing cycle when the seller itself extended the credit (§435.1(b)).
Before you rely on any order-by date, it is worth asking the shop four plain questions:
- Is the date about when it ships, or when it arrives?
- Which carrier and which service, and from where does it ship?
- If it runs late, will you refund or replace it, and how fast?
- Does the gift need a size?
If you want to try it
The last question is the one you can settle yourself. Earrings need no size, and neither does a ring that adjusts, like our Beaded Mesh Ring: three rows of tiny beads in sterling silver, drawn in or let out by a chain at the back. Other gifts are in our gift ideas. What ten jewelers put first in their own gift edits this season is in our count of their gift pages.