When should I order Christmas gift codes?

A week ahead is comfortable. December is the one month when issuance, delivery and support all slow down at once.

Should they spend it before or after Christmas?

After, usually. The deepest discounting of the year lands in the days right after Christmas.

What is the most common December problem?

Codes landing in spam. Volume is high and filters get aggressive, so add the sender to contacts before the code is due.

Christmas gift cards without the December panic

What actually slows down in December

Brand-side issuance. Volume is many times normal and queues form.
Email delivery. Higher volume, heavier filtering, more messages in spam.
Support. Any problem takes longer to resolve, at exactly the time you have least slack.
Stock. Specific denominations and specific brands do run out.

None of this is dramatic on 5 December. All of it is on the 23rd.

Ask a week ahead. That is the single piece of advice in this article that matters.

Buying before the sales, spending after

Worth knowing: the deepest retail discounting happens right after Christmas. A card given on the 25th is worth meaningfully more on the 27th than it was on the 24th.

You do not need to do anything about this except mention it. "Might be worth waiting for the sales" is useful advice that costs you nothing and makes the gift go further.

More on timing in sales events and gift card timing.

Handling the whole list at once

If you are buying six or eight cards:

Write the list first — person, brand, amount — before buying anything.
Order them together, in one go, early.
Keep the emails in one folder. Codes scattered across an inbox in December get lost.
Print them all at once and put them in cards.

That takes about half an hour and replaces two weeks of low-level worry.

The spam problem is worse in December

Filters get more aggressive when volume rises. Before the codes are due:

Add the sender to your contacts.
Reply once to the confirmation.
Check the spam folder before assuming nothing arrived.

See why gift code emails go to spam.

Presentation at scale

For a list of people, a small consistent format works better than improvising:

Same card design, handwritten name and one line each.
The code printed, folded inside.
A small thing taped to each — a chocolate, a sachet of coffee.

It looks deliberate because it is, and it is faster than choosing individually.

What to avoid

Experience vouchers with a 12-month expiry given in December. The year runs out in the same dead January week every time.
Codes sent by email on Christmas Eve. They land in spam and are found in March.
Cards for shops that might not survive the winter. January is when struggling retailers fail.