Yahoo! is making sure all its staff get a bit of Christmas cheer this year by sending them all home for a week's holiday between Christmas and New Year.

The internet bellwether is shutting all its US offices for the week and asking all employees to take either paid or unpaid leave.

"This holiday season we will be closing Yahoo! offices in the US during the week of December 25 through December 31, 2006. This makes good business sense and is common practice for many media and technology companies during what is traditionally a quiet work week. The expectation is that nearly all US Yahoos will participate in the office closure by utilizing their vacation time, personal floaters, or taking unpaid time off. This will allow many US Yahoos to enjoy guilt-free time-off while helping Yahoo! reduce unused vacation time."

The mail then warns staff that Yahoo!'s online holiday tracker will automatically put the holidays into the system unless they change their settings.

A Yahoo! employee at the London office was unaware of the edict - either because the email is still on its way or because Europeans take a different view of holidays, and are usually paid for them. More here from Valleywag, which has the whole email. ®

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