This two week break is common in a lot of large manufacturing companies, it's actually an accounting practice that helps the company more than the workers. They know so many people take their vacation times during this period that productivity drops off, and the expense of keeping the plant open, lighting, heating, etc adds up, so instead they send everyone home during this two week period. They then get to take two weeks of everyone's vacation time. This reduces the amount of vacation time total they owe their workers, so they reduce their overall debt this way. Effectively, if they lay off all these workers, they now owe them two weeks less vacation time pay. As a result a non-christmas or Channukah celebrating worker who was going to come to work anyway gets shafted out of the choice of takin his vacation when he wants, and the company erases some debt. And you get to wait a bit longer for a car. But would you really want a car that was finished 5 minutes before closing Christmas eve?