BIT early to think about Christmas?

Not when it comes to booking time off over the festive season. 

If you're lucky enough to have a job when you can book holidays over Christmas, then take a look at this....

If you’re crafty enough and get in there before your colleagues, you can have a lovely 10 days away from the office while only having to use three days of your remaining holiday entitlement.

This is what we call a proper Christmas gift.

The way to do this is to make sure you book December 27, 28 and 29 off work.

If you do this, your last working day before Christmas will be December 22 and you won’t return until January 2 next year.

It’s all thanks to when the big dates from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day fall, with a little bit of help from the weekends.

Here’s a handy breakdown of how the end of the year looks:

Friday, December 22: Your last day at work

Saturday, December 23

Sunday, December 24: Christmas Eve

Monday, December 25: Christmas Day

Tuesday, December 26: Boxing Day

Wednesday, December 27: Normal working day so book it off

Thursday, December 28: Normal working day so book it off

Friday, December 29: Normal working day so book it off

Saturday, December 30

Sunday, December 31: New Year’s Eve

Monday, January 1: New Year’s Day

Tuesday, January 2: Back to work again

So, you’d better get booking pretty quick before others sitting near you read this and get wise to the little holiday hack.

And we of course realise this sadly won’t apply to people who have to work weekends or bank holidays, or who can’t get time off over Christmas – you have our sympathy and respect.

To those others who have already blown their holiday allowance for this year and aren’t able to take advantage of this, that’s just too bad – we hope all those hot dog or legs photos during the summer are worth it.