Christmas Vacations - Did or do you take time off around the holidays?

When I was young, I never had any prime vacation time due to lack of seniority.

We had to complete 15 years of service to earn 3 weeks off. Shortly after I made 15 years it was reduced to 5 years.

Towards the end of my working years I was able
to choose prime time, including Christmas, but I was always on call 24/7 and in some situations couldn’t be more than an hour away from work.

Cell phones and laptops with dial up access were a big step forward.

I haven’t had or needed a vacation since I stopped working in 2005.
 

debodun said:
When I was working, I'd usually take a vacation from Christmas eve until the day after New Year, but that depended on how the days fell during the week on any given year.
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When I was working, I did not take time off for holidays unless it was mandatory. If there was work around Christmas or any other holiday, I volunteered to work the overtime, which was holiday pay and time and 1/2. I saved my vacation time for personal trips, usually camping in or out of state for 6-8 weeks, three week vacations back to back and additional time unpaid. Perfect for us.
 
When I worked for 'Big blue', we started off with 21 days holiday + statuary holidays + 2 discretionary days. The statuary + discretionary days were used to give a break from Christmas eve to 2nd Jan.

We also were given a half day holiday on the last working day and this caused problems for me one year. I had developed an overnight scheduling system for various production reports, and many departments scheduled them for the last working day of the year. However, since we had been given a half day holiday, the scheduler wasn't run. Back at work after the Christmas break, it was all 'Where's my report, where's my report.....'
I had to do a special run of the scheduler with a modified calendar to get the reports generated.
 
My company gave a standard 6 week annual holiday taken whenever we pleased... and we did, and would end up with much more by using weekends and bank holidays ... so using 3 days of a holiday, incoporating the weekend and a bank holiday would give a week... ..or adding 2 weeknds to 14 days would give almost 3 weeks
 
hollydolly said:
My company gave a standard 6 week annual holiday taken whenever we pleased... and we did, and would end up with much more by using weekends and bank holidays ... so using 3 days of a holiday, incoporating the weekend and a bank holiday would give a week... ..or adding 2 weekends to 14 days would give almost 3 weeks
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Ah,so that's where my TV licence money goes....
 
I would normally save my 2 weeks of vacation for summer. However, in 2008 when I knew it would be my mom’s last Xmas I flew home for 2 weeks and the entire family came. Hollydolly, Europeans have the right idea about length of vacation time per year.
 

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