National holidays have the same coordination role: even if one had the same total days of vacation per year (as paid by employer), having some of them fixed by societal convention is an advantage for those who want to go to their village and meet their friends and relatives.
This is why Christmas shutdowns (and Thanksgiving) are the best holidays. Whenever we have a new person, we tell them how seriously we take the shutdown and to not send the team any emails until after.
In 2020, we had a manager join from a different FANG and she sent two emails the first Monday of break. Apparently another manager immediately texted her and told her to stop!
Maybe it's because I am French but all these stories about people working during breaks is insane.
In all honesty, I have several work pals who do read their emails when on break (their choice) - I prefer coming back to 500 to 800 emails, quickly go though the important ones and realize that 8/9th of the problems solved themselves without my intervention.
