I'm travelling with a party of 3 to India just after xmas who need a visa. My family already have OCI. They applied on https://indianvisaonline.gov.in/evisa/tvoa.html and got the confirmation within one day.

You have to apply within 30 days of arrival, if you apply too early they will hold your application till it is within 30 days. So in your case if you plan to arrive on Feb 5 you should not apply before January 5.

If you applied with an agent (there are quite a few out there who show up on op of google search results) they will also hold back the application and file only 30 days before arrival. My colleague fell for that trap because he wanted to square away the visa as early as possible and applied with an agent two months before arrival. They kept him in suspense till 30days of departure are correctly filed the application and got him his visa within two days of filing.