There’s a particular kind of dread that settles over communications teams in December. It’s not the usual workplace panic about deadlines or budgets. It’s something more visceral. Because whilst the rest of the world is winding down, sipping mulled wine and debating whether to put the tree up before or after the first, PR professionals are quietly bracing themselves for the one thing we all know is coming but can never quite predict. The festive crisis.
It might be a social media misstep that goes viral on Boxing Day. A product recall announced on Christmas Eve. A rogue employee interview that resurfaces just as everyone’s logged off for the holidays. Or perhaps it’s the slow-burn reputational issue that’s been simmering since October and finally explodes when half your leadership team is skiing in the Alps and the press office is down to a skeleton crew.
I’ve lived through enough December dramas to know that crisis management during the festive period isn’t just about having a plan. It’s about having the right mindset, the right people on standby, and crucially, the ability to stay calm when everyone around you is losing their heads. Or more likely, is simply unavailable because they’re three sherries deep at their in-laws’.
So here’s what I’ve learned. Consider this your survival guide for keeping your reputation intact when the baubles are up and the stakes are high.
Why Christmas makes everything harder
Let’s start with the obvious. The festive period is a perfect storm for crisis communications. Offices close. Key decision-makers disappear. Journalists are either off entirely or staffing skeleton crews with junior reporters desperate for a juicy story to fill the holiday news vacuum. Meanwhile, social media never sleeps. The public never stops scrolling. And if something goes wrong, it will spread just as quickly on December 27th as it would in the middle of June.
But here’s the kicker. Your response time is slower. The people you need to sign off statements are unreachable. The legal team is out of office until January 2nd. Your media contacts have auto-replies saying they’ll be back in the New Year. And yet, the crisis doesn’t wait. It escalates, it trends, it snowballs.
I’ve seen brands take two days to respond to something that should have been handled in two hours, simply because no one could get hold of the right person to approve a statement. By the time they did, the damage was done. The narrative had already been written by everyone else.
That’s why preparation matters. Not just having a crisis plan in a folder somewhere, but actually stress-testing it for the festive period specifically. Because the rules change when half your team is out and the other half is juggling work calls with turkey dinners.
The golden rules of festive crisis management
If I had to distil two decades of handling December dramas into a few hard-won principles, here’s what I’d tell you.
Accept that crises don’t take holidays. You might desperately want to believe that nothing will happen between December 23rd and January 2nd, but that’s wishful thinking. The reality is that crises love a long weekend. They thrive in the gaps. So plan accordingly. Assign a rota. Make sure someone senior is always reachable. Don’t assume the issue will wait until everyone’s back in the office, because it won’t.
Simplify your approval process. In normal times, you might have three layers of sign-off before a statement goes out. At Christmas, you need to strip that back. Agree in advance who has the authority to make decisions when the usual hierarchy isn’t available. Empower your communications lead to act without waiting for the CEO to finish their Christmas pudding. Speed matters more than perfection in a crisis, and delays can be fatal.
Brief your spokespeople early. If something does go wrong, you’ll need someone credible to front it. But you can’t just shove an unprepared executive in front of a camera on December 28th and hope for the best. Make sure your key spokespeople know they might be called upon. Give them the headlines of what could go wrong and how you’d want to respond. A quick briefing in mid-December can save you hours of scrambling later.
Monitor constantly. Just because your office is closed doesn’t mean the conversation about your brand has stopped. Set up alerts. Check social media. Keep an eye on the news cycle. The earlier you spot a problem, the easier it is to manage. I’ve caught potential crises before they became crises simply by noticing a spike in negative mentions on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
And finally, stay human. This is Christmas. People are emotional, stressed, and often tired. If your brand has made a mistake, acknowledge it with empathy. Don’t hide behind corporate jargon or legal defensiveness. A sincere apology delivered quickly will always serve you better than a perfect statement delivered too late.
The things that trip people up
I’ve seen the same mistakes made over and over again. One of the most common is assuming that because journalists are on holiday, the story won’t run. Wrong. News desks might be quieter, but they’re still staffed. And if you’ve got a juicy scandal, they’ll run it. Sometimes even more prominently, because there’s less competition for space.
Another trap is thinking you can ignore social media because your office is closed. You can’t. A tweet posted at 10pm on Christmas Day can have 50,000 retweets by Boxing Day morning. If you’re not watching, you’re already behind.
Then there’s the false sense of security that comes from having an out-of-office email. “I’ll deal with it when I’m back.” But by the time you’re back, the narrative has already been set. The headlines have already been written. The reputational damage has already been done. You can’t un-ring that bell.
And perhaps the most dangerous mistake of all is assuming your crisis plan will work in December the same way it works in July. It won’t. You need a festive-specific plan. Shorter approval chains. Pre-approved holding statements. A list of who’s available when. Contact numbers that actually work, not office landlines that go to voicemail for two weeks.
What good looks like
The organisations that handle festive crises well are the ones who’ve thought about them in advance. They’ve got a comms lead who’s always reachable. They’ve got pre-drafted statements for the most likely scenarios. They’ve briefed their spokespeople. They’ve streamlined their decision-making process. And crucially, they’ve accepted that crises don’t respect the calendar.
I worked with a construction client a few years back who had a equipment collapse on site in the days before Christmas. The structural damage was contained to the site itself, but nearby residents panicked. Had Christmas been ruined for the entire community? Was it safe to go home? What had actually happened? Media interest spiked immediately, and we knew we had a narrow window to get ahead of the speculation before it spiralled into something far worse.
The reality was straightforward. It was an on-site issue that could be rectified in a few hours. But the community needed to know that before panic really set in. We activated the crisis team immediately, drafted statements that were clear and reassuring without downplaying what had happened, briefed spokespeople, and monitored social media round the clock to make sure misinformation didn’t take root.
By acting fast and communicating openly, we kept control of the narrative. The story didn’t escalate. The community was reassured. And by Boxing Day, it was old news.
That’s what good crisis comms looks like at Christmas. Not waiting for disaster to strike, but being ready to move the moment it does. Because in a crisis, every hour you wait is an hour someone else is writing your story for you.
The aftermath
Here’s something people don’t talk about enough. The post-crisis debrief. When the dust settles and everyone’s back from their holidays, you need to sit down and work out what went right, what went wrong, and what you’d do differently next time.
Did your approval process work? Were the right people available? Did your spokespeople perform under pressure? Did you spot the issue early enough? What could you have done faster, better, smarter?
Every crisis is a learning opportunity. And if you’re lucky enough to get through December unscathed, that’s still worth reviewing. What worked? What nearly didn’t? Where were the weak points?
Because next Christmas, you’ll be doing this all over again. And the more you learn, the better you’ll handle it.
A season of good comms
I’m not going to lie to you. Managing a crisis over Christmas is exhausting. It’s stressful. It’s the last thing you want to be doing when you’d rather be eating leftover turkey and watching terrible festive TV. But it’s also part of the job.
The organisations that survive reputational crises during the holidays are the ones who’ve planned for them. Who’ve accepted that bad things can happen at inconvenient times. Who’ve put the right people, processes, and monitoring in place to deal with it.
So before you log off for the festive break, take an hour. Review your crisis plan. Check your contact list. Brief your spokespeople. Set up your alerts. Make sure someone’s watching.
Because when the crisis hits, and it might, you’ll be grateful you did.
And if nothing goes wrong? Well, you can enjoy your Christmas pudding with a clear conscience, knowing that if it had, you’d have been ready.
Now that’s the kind of gift every PR professional deserves.
