Sun Microsystems used to give employees the week between Christmas and New Year off, it was called Winter Break - probably a relic of its academic roots. It was its own thing, you didn't need to take PTO for it. I wonder which large employers still do this. All bets are off if you're doing billable hours. Retail is its own creature, though, you need to be open to make sales, so Patagonia is an outlier in their class.