It’s definitely an ‘each to their own’ situation, and I can see both sides of the argument. We will (we have, in fact). We’re now out until the 2nd Jan, with the exception of clearing up 2 rounds of video-related revisions over the weekend.
We were bracing ourselves for December being awful, but it’s been a huge month for us. In theory, if we weren’t going out of office, and if the 11 days remaining of December had continued in the same vein as the first 19 days, it would have been our biggest ever month by a long-shot, for which we’re super grateful. We’re now taking the time off to focus on family and rest, in the hopes that we’ll come back ready for the new year. We’ve got big growth plans for next year, and I think sometimes you need to allow yourself some time to take a step back before you commit to pushing things forward.
We’ve no idea whether January will be good/bad/average, but in freelance, time off can be a rare thing. We typically only take time off if we’re going away on holiday together, and that only happens about once a year, so we try to treat Christmas like a mini break. We visit our respective families together, catch up with friends etc. The next two weeks are about us as people rather than us as freelancers.