Christmas leave priority

Rotational is the best way.
My DS has had to work for the last six years and he does moray of the other bank holidays too.

Just point out to them the missing children that are 7. hehehe

I'm not saying they are but realistically adult Christmases are a lot more flexible. We don't as adults have wait for Father Christmas to visit and then rush down Christmas morning to open gifts. Adults understand it is about all being together and celebrating. Most of us don't see everyone all in one day anyway so it's a more elongated event anyway.

The rota needs to be split fairly every year between everyone who wants Xmas off.

Whether that’s because they are parents, single people, carers, jet setters, or someone who wants to sit in their pyjamas watching the Sound of Music on repeat.

And what happened the year before should be taken into account for previous employees.

Do you remember your childhood Christmases? Do you remember how special and magical they were? I'm genuinely interested

Working public holidays inc Christmas is part of the job for me. We are asked our preference between Xmas/NY & management use those preferences to try & compile a fair rota. What family we have has no bearing on who works when & we have to take a turn at covering the unpopular shifts. Your work are being very unfair prioritising staff in this way.

Could people with young children just celebrate 'Christmas' on another day near to the 25th? The kids probably wouldn't even know the difference!

Why parents first? A proven single parent with no family/other options i agree with, but a married person....why is their needs more important than someone with older children or no children?

Again, it's not about the parents but the children.

Rewind a year and the terminally ill child would have had one last Christmas. Wouldn't you think it would be massive shame that the parents had to work because it was their turn?

What about the couple that had lots of failed IVF attempts and finally had some success. Should their child miss lots of Christmases with their parents to be fair?

It's not about who is most important in society. Adults are prioritised in all kinds of ways over children, but sometimes we need to recognise that childhood Christmases are time limited and more poignant for most people. If you ask me to recall a Christmas from the past, I instantly recall one from my childhood. Not from when I was in my 20s and child free.

First come first served is fair 🙂 your not anymore deserving of time off just because you have them the childfree employees have worked just as much as you have children shouldn't come into it

I understand you are not bothered about that and feel it's not your problem but that's like me saying you seeing your family on Xmas day is not my problem and you knew what before you took the job

I'm not sure she DID know that before taking the job? it sounds like a new organisational policy just rolled out today.

I suspect businesses might have problems with recruitment and retention if employees knew this policy beforehand.

But as a child-free adult, you have the choice to set off at 6am and be with your parents by late morning (the roads will be quiet it's Christmas!).

Didn't you think this through before making the decision to move so far from your family? (You know, like the people who didn't think it through before having children.)

Pretty sure OP accepts her family or whatever she wants to do on Xmas is not anyone else’s problem, she’s not suggesting she gets it off every year at the expense of parents just that it needs to be allocated fairly without regard to who has kids, however quite a few parents are suggesting the other way around, that they should get priority just because they have small kids or that somehow spending Christmas with small kids is more important than anyone else’s plans. It’s really not. People with elderly parents will never get those years back. Someone wanting to do a trip of a lifetime pre kids may not get that chance again. Not really relevant or anyone else’s problem what people are choosing to use their leave for is it.

In my company the Christmas leave booking opens up in October, and then everyone can request one day off. Then after I think two weeks the rest is opened up and people can request more.

I thought it was only my husband's work that wouldn't agree any Christmas leave until the last possible moment. Family are abroad but it's often impossible to arrange to see them as he can't get any leave in December approved until October.

this year it’s a long weekend because of how the holidays fall. You want to take Christmas Eve off? We have driven at 5pm many times

The rules could be amended to include this obviously.

My point is that I don't think all Christmases are equally important to most people. Most people have core memories of childhood Christmases spent with their parents. Equally those last Christmases spent with loved ones are often particularly poignant.

I feel that there is a weird growing animosity towards parents. I am increasingly encountering posters reframing initiatives designed to benefit children so that they are instead described as some kind of unfair advantage for parents. This naturally gets the child free and older people up in arms but it is completely misleading. Posters repeating incessantly that if people chose to have children then they have to suck up all the consequences of this decision. This is a worrying and I believe disingenuous way to look at the world.

Children are people in their own right. We have all been children at one stage in our life and relied on society at large to afford us some privileges as we have not been able to secure them for ourselves. I believe every young child should be able to enjoy Christmas with their parents wherever possible. I think this is a priority group at Christmas. Not the parents, the children. Father Christmas, opening gifts on Christmas morning etc are all traditions for children that can't just be moved easily and I think most children should enjoy that short stage of their life where Christmas is magical.

It's working on Christmas Day, not being sent away for 6 months.

They'll see their children anyway!

Everybody should have a chance and a turn to celebrate Christmas.

I disagree with 1st come 1st served. People with too much time on their hands to plan for something 3 months away aren't more important. But people with older children or no children at all are not less important than people with young children and this is a discriminatory policy - the same law that prevents employers from discriminating against people with children also prevents them from discriminating against people without children. This is a policy that is deliberately making it more likely that someone will miss their last chance to share Christmas with an elderly relative

The fair policy should be to have an application deadline for days of leave required over the festive season and that anyone who worked on one or both of Christmas day and New Years in more than one of the last 3 years get top priority, anyone not in that category who worked on one or both of Christmas day and New Year this time last year gets next level of priority and remaining clashes are sorted by random ballot.

I was coming on to say something similar. LoL!! Mine are 53 and 49, but still my children!

Well that would be a nice email to receive if you'd just had your fourth miscarriage, or had just accepted that IVF wasn't going to work for you, or you had a terminally ill parent but no children of your own. What if someone's only child had died? Or all manner of possibilities that makes this policy unfair and pretty heartless towards people who fall outside their blinkered view of who's more important in society.