In Estonia, Christmas is marked with three consecutive public holidays on December 24-26, for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Both the day before Christmas, December 23, and New Year's Eve, December 31, are also nationally mandated shortened workdays.

On Friday, December 20, employees at the Sami machinery factory hit the lights on Friday evening, and won't be back again until the morning of December 30th. The entire factory crew is going on Christmas break.

"We've decided on this because our major partners are also on break at these times," explained Sami production manager Hendrik Varblane. "We've synchronized our vacations, and this way we'll avoid disruptions in our deliveries."

Sami manufactures road maintenance equipment, and right now, production is at its busiest. Even so, it doesn't make sense to keep certain work stages running at the end of the year; according to Varblane, it's significantly cheaper and more profitable to shut down its entire Saue factory during the holiday period.

Employees won't have time off all the way through the new year, however. Due to the high volume of work, the factory's 130 workers will still need to report back to work before year's end.

Meanwhile, the work at Konesko's crane motor production factory in Türi-Alliku has already been done in advance.

"Luckily, we're doing well with production volumes and orders," highlighted Konesko production manager Almar Paimla. "We've got plenty of orders and work. This is why we worked our days in advance – to ensure our customers are satisfied and our orders are shipped on time."

While it wasn't possible to arrange a collective vacation, working ahead meant the factory's 55 employees will still have the entire week of Christmas off.

"I think it's a solid plan, because then we get the whole week off," said Konesko operator Holger Järva. "Why not push a little harder for a few days? One week, we worked an extra hour each day, and on one Saturday we worked a full day, and we got it all done."

The Tartu-based Torm Metall has scheduled a collective vacation for the end of the year for years already, since this period involves so many public holidays and the shortened workdays preceding them aren't very efficient.

"Since public holidays aren't counted as vacation days, the advantage is that you use up less vacation time, and people get a long break," explained Torm Metall board member Oskar Kilk. "That's the main idea behind this vacation."

Depending on what days of the week they fall on each year, the company will sometimes give employees days off before other public holidays as well. Last year, for example, workers were given a paid day off on Monday, August 19, the day before Estonia's Restoration of Independence Day, which together with the weekend gave their employees four consecutive days off.

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