The big deal is that it is yet another tool in our bag of tricks. This year I myself did not do this, but I have in years past. Sometimes guys don't just want "Christmas off" but perhaps a few days of vacation over the Christmas timeframe. I have found when I have actual vacation days, there is a lot more flexibility with the creation of reserve lines, and of course with the built in credit for each day of vacation you don't have to award as many pairings to create a legal regular line. And of course, even if you are senior, if you truly want vacation days over Christmas, why waste your primary vacation bid for the week spanning Dec 25, when you can use it for the summer weeks, and then just bid an earlier December vacation and slide it? I just personally have really enjoyed having 2-3 days of "real" vacation over Thanksgiving, followed by 3-4 more over Christmas, all initially awarded via a week that touched neither.

This strategy is even better for the summer months. I've bid a vacation week that started in June and spilled over into July. Then I bought more vacation days and placed them on both side of that week. When bidding for each month, I slid the days as appropriate, and voila, now I had a week of June vacation--exactly where I wanted the days---and July as well, all for the "price" of one week bid plus the hours out of my full service bank to buy the additional days.

Of course now that my full service bank is at -29 I can't do that right now!