Extra company holidays: 0-cost employee benefit

Extra time off: why everyone should love it.
Ahh... the so called "work" week between Xmas and New Year's Eve. My estimate is that precisely 0 work gets done in the 3.5 business days between the 2 sets of national holidays.
Exhibit A: FDR drive @ 8:45 am. Traffic speed: 75 mph. On a regular Wednesday, my CBR barely gets into 3rd gear all the way to Wall Street from LIC, Queens. This morning, I was limited only by my gloves' ability to block wind. Wall Street itself: empty, but for the obvious tourists posing for photographs, adding theirs to the millions of identical frames already extant. Sure signs of not-really-a-real-work-day.
Amazingly, here we are, expected to show up on time w. the whistle, even though 0 actual work will get done.
Undoubtedly, you have friends who get this week officially off. Enough companies see common sense and realize that they will spend MORE on lighting up the offices, than they will derive in actual value from those few of us who actually show up.
What would it cost to have a company-wide week long holiday? I say nothing. Not $1. Why? Because salaried employees shift work. The weeks before and after holidays are likely busier than usual, with many of us working longer hours to wrap up the year's loose ends. Those few workers who don't take vacation days during the holiday weeks only do so because we realize that no work will actually be expected of us. Essentially, we show up simply to hang out. We show up so as not to lose *real* vacation days, during which we would ordinarily be pretty busy.
Other examples of time similarly wasted include summer Friday afternoons, which are consumed by thoughts of beating traffic to Long Island or upstate.
Solution: sanction official company holidays for days between Xmas and New Years. It will cost next to nothing, especially when taking into account the cost of keeping offices open. Your employees will value this benefit. They will tell all their friends about it. They will work harder in the days leading up to and following the holidays themselves.
Its a win-win. And how often do you get a win-win in HR? Enough said.