I agree with the "yes and yes" response. In my experience, some places are peeved they have a December deadline, as they'd like to have gotten things moving faster. So they're reviewing applications as they come in and have a committee meeting scheduled for one day after the deadline (or even the day OF the deadline, which means you're basically SOL if you try to apply on that day.) Then the phone interviews can be squeezed in before classes. Or if there are no phone interviews, at least the candidates can be invited to campus and arrangements made during December, so the interviews can all occur in the first weeks of the semester.
At my current institution, the previous two searches had a December 1 or December 15 deadline, and the candidates were all invited sometime in December (the committees managed to meet before the semester was over, even if that meant meeting during finals period immediately after the application deadline.) The interviews happened in January and the offers settled by early February. Basically, our chair was mad that the position was not finalized by the school sooner, or else we would have had more breathing room to move quickly on these searches.
However, lots of other places will not be so organized/crazy and will give it some time. The committee might not meet until January, with interviews happening in February.
