When to start pinning for a holiday: a season-by-season calendar
Start pinning a holiday's recipes about 75 days ahead, and emailing them about 30 days ahead, because Pinterest readers plan weeks before they cook and a fresh pin takes time to be found.
Pinterest readers are planners. The person searching for holiday sides two months out is not cooking this week; she is building a board. A pin saved the week of the holiday misses her entirely, and it misses the weeks in which Pinterest would have shown it to the people building boards after her.
So the question is never when the holiday is. It is how long before the holiday the searching starts, plus how long a new pin takes to be found. The calendar below answers it for the year, and the reasoning lets you adjust it for your own readers.
The two lead times
Pinterest: 75 days. Searching for a holiday starts two to three months out and builds. A fresh pin needs a couple of weeks to be distributed and start collecting saves. Starting 75 days ahead puts your pins in place as the searching ramps, and leaves them time to accumulate the saves that get them shown in the busiest weeks. This is our number from running three recipe sites, not Pinterest's; Pinterest's own seasonal guidance has tended to say "start early", and 75 days is what early has meant for us.
The newsletter: 30 days. Email readers are closer to the stove. A Thanksgiving issue in mid-October lands with people starting to think about the menu; one in early September is noise. Thirty days ahead, then a second nearer the day, is the rhythm.
The calendar
Dates are for 2026; the lead times carry to any year. The Pinterest column is when to start making and posting pins. By the holiday you should be winding down, not starting.
| Occasion | Date | Pinterest from | Newsletter from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valentine's Day | Feb 14 | Dec 1 | Jan 15 |
| St. Patrick's Day | Mar 17 | Jan 1 | Feb 15 |
| Easter | Apr 5 | Jan 20 | Mar 6 |
| Cinco de Mayo | May 5 | Feb 19 | Apr 5 |
| Mother's Day | May 10 | Feb 24 | Apr 10 |
| Memorial Day | May 25 | Mar 11 | Apr 25 |
| Father's Day | Jun 21 | Apr 7 | May 22 |
| July 4th | Jul 4 | Apr 20 | Jun 4 |
| Labor Day | Sep 7 | Jun 24 | Aug 8 |
| Halloween | Oct 31 | Aug 17 | Oct 1 |
| Thanksgiving | Nov 26 | Sep 12 | Oct 27 |
| Christmas | Dec 25 | Oct 11 | Nov 25 |
| New Year's Eve | Dec 31 | Oct 17 | Dec 1 |
Seasons work the same way without a date. Pumpkin and apple pins go up in late August. Soups from mid-September. Grilling from early April. Strawberries and rhubarb from late March. The rule is: when you first feel the season is a month away, Pinterest readers felt it a month ago.
If you are reading this inside the window
Then start today, with the recipes readers search for most and the ones that need the least time to be found: sides and make-ahead dishes, on the holiday board and the everyday board both. Skip the ones that only get searched in the last week. And put next year's start date in the calendar now, while it stings.
What to pin in the window
Not everything with the holiday in the title. Thanksgiving is the example; the order holds for most holidays.
- The sides. The main gets searched once; sides get searched ten times, because every table needs six of them. Stuffing, sweet potatoes, green beans, rolls, cranberry anything.
- Make-ahead and slow cooker. The searches are about oven space. Anything that stays out of the oven on the day has a reader.
- Desserts that are not the obvious one. There are a hundred pumpkin pie pins for every pecan bar.
- Leftovers. Pin them in the window too, not after. Readers plan for the leftovers before the day.
- The main. Yes, eventually.
For each one, a fresh look, not a re-save of last year's pin, to the holiday board and to the recipe's everyday board, on different days.
When to stop
A week before the holiday, stop starting. Pins saved that late do not get found in time, and the account that posts forty holiday pins two days out looks like the account that forgot. The last week is for the newsletter: the day-before issue with the timeline, the leftover issue after.
Next year's calendar is this year's data
Note which holiday pins brought readers and when the clicks started. Most blogs find the searching starts earlier than they expected, every year. If the clicks on your Thanksgiving pins began in the first week of September, next year start in August. The lead time is a number; move it.