While Christmas may not be the same as years gone by, with National Clinical Director Jason Leitch stating that “Christmas is not going to be normal” and that “people should get their digital Christmas ready”, one thing that Covid-19 can’t take away is our love for the yule-tide season.

Whether it will be drinking mulled wine at home, heading to the online Christmas markets or having the office party over Zoom (before making a separate one without your boss)  - we’ll all be doing our best to make the festivities feel as normal as possible.

If you want to take full advantage of the break, then thanks to this handy loophole you could have 11 days off by only using three days of your annual leave.

Sounds too good to be true, right? Well in fact it’s completely true.

Here’s what you need to know

This year, Christmas Day and New Year's Day fall on a Friday, so your bank holidays will get transferred over to the following Monday.

This means that you will be off from Friday 25 December to Tuesday 29 December and Friday 1 January to Tuesday 5 January.

So if you take off Tuesday 29 December - Thursday 31 December then you will be off work for a whole eleven days.

This is how your calendar would look.

Friday 25th December - Christmas Day

Saturday 26th December - Boxing Day (weekend)

Sunday 27th December - Weekend 

Monday 28th December - Boxing Day bank holiday (substitute)

Tuesday 29th December - Take annual leave

Wednesday 30th December - Take annual leave

Tuesday 31st December - Take annual leave

Friday 1st January 2021 - New Year’s Day

Saturday 2nd January - Weekend

Sunday 3rd January - Weekend

Monday 4th January - 2nd January bank holiday (substitute day)

Tuesday 5th January - Back to work