In Europe, worked in couple of countries. All the employers had the right to force you to take vacation at a certain date I have never seen it done. I am talking about software industry ofc.
I'm actually a bit surprised that you haven't come across it before because I've always been under the impression that these winter and summer shutdowns are pretty common.
Another example of the situation above are factory workers, ie in Germany there are millions of cars moving south every summer during specific weeks valid for their part of the country, when +-whole factory goes out.
You need a more diverse workforce. Where I am, the Persian guy will work every Jan 1 as long as we guarantee him the first day of spring off. The Muslim lady will do Dec 24/25 as long as she gets some other specific day off.
The hard days to schedule are “family day” and other non-cultural holidays.
This is only a solution some of the time. I worked through Christmas / New Year's at eBay the year I joined, because I hadn't accrued enough vacation for it to make sense to take vacation.
But there was no work to do, because... everyone else was on vacation. Having me in the office benefited no one.
Though I’ve often try to work the non-holiday days around Christmas because it lets me clean everything up without anyone asking for much. But we always keep a skeleton team around in case (critical operation).
That solves the problem considered from my perspective, but it's less good from eBay's perspective. What the company really wants is to make the vacation at that time compulsory. If I have nothing better to do, under the system I experienced, I can still come into the office and eBay has to pay me despite the fact that they have nothing for me to do.
The other tactic I saw was block out vacation, but don’t actually take it so you actually have time to catch up on work. Every leaves you alone (because they think you’re off).
In general management prefers team members sort things out among themselves. E.g. one goes on leave during the first week of the school holiday the other on the second week.