Trying to Exclude Sticky Posts From date_query

When you set up your query, do it this way ( I believe you were missing the ‘date_query’ key ):

$args = array(
    'date_query' => array(
        array(
            'year'  => 2012,
            'month' => 12,
            'day'   => 12,
        ),
    ),
    'ignore_sticky_posts' => true,
    'post__not_in'  => get_option('sticky_posts') ...
);
$query = new WP_Query( $args );

http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query#Date_Parameters