The holiday shopping calendar: when categories go on sale

Lists of "the best month to buy" every category are everywhere, and most of them can't tell you where their claims come from. Retailers don't publish a calendar of when each category goes on promotion, and the patterns shift by store, region and year. What doesn't shift is the date of each holiday that shopping revolves around. Those are set by rules, many of them in federal law, and they're the one part of the calendar you can plan around with certainty.

That's why our homepage's "This month" strip only shows dates set by a rule. It's computed when the site is built, from the rules below, so it can't go out of date.

The rules behind the dates

Fixed calendar days. New Year's Day, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Independence Day, Halloween, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve land on the same calendar day every year. Only the weekday changes.

Nth-weekday rules. Several holidays are defined by a weekday and its position in the month. Under federal law and OPM's list of federal holidays, Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November, Memorial Day is the last Monday in May, Labor Day is the first Monday in September, and Washington's Birthday (widely called Presidents' Day) is the third Monday in February. Federal law also sets Mother's Day as the second Sunday in May and Father's Day as the third Sunday in June.

Days defined by Thanksgiving. Black Friday is the common name for the day after Thanksgiving, and Cyber Monday for the Monday after it. The SBA describes Small Business Saturday as the Saturday after Thanksgiving. These names aren't set in law, but the dates follow from Thanksgiving's rule.

Easter is set by a calculation based on the lunar calendar, which is why its date moves from year to year. It can be computed in advance, so it's on our calendar too.

What we leave out. Retailer events like a store's own deal days aren't set by any public rule, so they don't appear on our strip. When a retailer announces one, its dates and terms are on that retailer's site.

Steps: planning a list around a date

1. Write the list first. Before any ad comes out, decide what you'll need for the holiday: groceries for a meal, gifts, decorations, travel basics.
2. Mark the date and the week before it in your calendar.
3. In that week, check the weekly ads and store apps against your list. Clip digital coupons for anything that matches.
4. Compare unit prices, not just headline prices. See our unit price guide.
5. Read the price match fine print if you're buying early. Target publishes any holiday price match window it offers on its price match page. Walmart's price match policy excludes Walmart.com special-event prices, naming Black Friday deals.
6. Ask for a rain check if an advertised grocery item is out of stock. Our rain check guide explains the federal rule behind them.

Why we don't predict sales by category

You'll see confident claims that a particular category is cheapest in a particular month. Some may hold in some stores in some years. We couldn't trace them to any retailer's published policy, so we don't repeat them. The honest version is shorter: the holiday dates are fixed, promotions tend to cluster around the holidays shoppers shop for, and your own price notebook will tell you more about your store than any national list.

After the holiday

Holiday-specific merchandise often moves to clearance after the date passes, but timing and markdowns are up to each store and each location. If you shop clearance, check the item and its unit price, and keep the receipt in case you need the store's return policy.

Store policies and promotions change. Check the official pages below before planning a holiday trip around them.