This morning as I listened to my wife stress out about all of the things she had left to do for the holidays, I also heard her mutter that maybe she needed a sick day to cope with it all.  But then she quickly added that doing so would be inconvienient and so off to work she trudged. 

From an organizational morale perspective, consider this:  What if department managers were allowed to give each employee an afternoon off to cope with some of their holiday stress?  I'm not proposing letting everyone go at the same time, but what if you staggered some "free" time off?

The obvious arguement is that employees should use their vacation days for this activity.  And that's true.  But the bigger impact comes from realizing that your organization would gain a significant increase in employee good will and positive morale energy from giving everyone a few extra hours off before the holidays to handle getting ready. Since many organizations slow down anyway around the holidays, the cost can be negligible if handled correctly.

This win-win is worth considering.