So I've been staring at our shared calendar for my team of 12 here in Chicago and I'm honestly stumped on how to handle the December break without everyone ending up pissed off. We have four people with big families—like three or four kids each—and they all have the exact same school holiday schedule, so they're all asking for that same window from the 20th to the 2nd. I did some digging online and saw people suggesting a rotating priority list where if you got Christmas off last year, you work it this year. But the problem is, some of my staff without kids have been the ones taking one for the team for three years straight and they're starting to get really vocal about wanting to travel to see their own parents out west.

My logic was originally to just let the parents have it because, you know, kids and magic and all that, but then I realized I'm basically telling my single or childless staff that their families matter less, which is a terrible vibe to set. I also read about seniority-based systems where the person who has been here 10 years gets first dibs, but that feels so old school and honestly kinda unfair to the newer high-performers who are actually keeping the lights on. I was thinking maybe a points system? I saw that mentioned on a forum but it seemed so complicated to track throughout the year and I'm worried it'll just lead to people gaming the system.

Here is what I have considered so far:

• Seniority based (feels too hierarchical for our culture)
• Rotating holidays (hard to track across multiple years of turnover)
• First come first served (just creates a stressful race to the inbox)

We're about three weeks out from when I promised a final schedule and I'm just going in circles. If I favor the big families, I lose the rest of the team's morale, but if I do a random lottery, I might end up with a dad of four working Christmas Day while a 22-year-old sits at home alone. Is there some kind of middle ground I'm missing or a way to facilitate a trade-off that actually feels fair to everyone involved...