How to Schedule Holiday Call Fairly: 2026 and 2027 Dates
Holiday call is where a call schedule earns or loses trust. Weeknights even out over a year. Christmas Day does not, and a physician who works Thanksgiving two years running remembers it longer than any count of weeknights.
This post sets out a method for physician groups of any size: decide what counts as a holiday, rank holidays in tiers, rotate the big ones over several years, keep counters that follow every swap, and write the trading rules down before the season starts.
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Decide what counts as a holiday shift
Start with your group’s holiday list. The 11 federal holidays are a reference, not a rule: each hospital or group decides which days it observes. You may also want days that are not federal holidays, such as Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve or the day after Thanksgiving.
Then define each holiday as a unit with a start and an end. “Christmas” can mean the night of December 24, the day shift on the 25th, or 24-hour call from 7:00 am on the 25th. Write it down, for example “Thanksgiving call: Thursday 7:00 am to Friday 7:00 am”. If your group splits the day into shifts, each shift is a unit.
Then group the units into tiers, so that trades and counters compare like with like.
| Tier | Example holidays | How to treat it |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Day, New Year’s Eve and Day | Rotate over several years; trade only within the tier |
| Tier 2 | Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day | Rotate year to year; count apart from Tier 1 |
| Tier 3 | Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Washington’s Birthday (Presidents’ Day), Juneteenth, Columbus Day, Veterans Day | Count as holidays and balance within the year |
The tiers are yours to set. A group may move the Fourth of July to Tier 1, or add Easter. What matters is that everyone knows the list before the first assignment.
The 2026 and 2027 dates
The year-end holidays, this season and next:
| Holiday | 2026 season | 2027 season |
|---|---|---|
| Thanksgiving Day | Thursday, November 26, 2026 | Thursday, November 25, 2027 |
| Day after Thanksgiving | Friday, November 27, 2026 | Friday, November 26, 2027 |
| Christmas Eve | Thursday, December 24, 2026 | Friday, December 24, 2027 |
| Christmas Day | Friday, December 25, 2026 | Saturday, December 25, 2027 |
| New Year’s Eve | Thursday, December 31, 2026 | Friday, December 31, 2027 |
| New Year’s Day | Friday, January 1, 2027 | Saturday, January 1, 2028 |
The other federal holidays in 2027, from the OPM federal holidays schedule:
| Holiday | 2027 |
|---|---|
| Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. | Monday, January 18 |
| Washington’s Birthday | Monday, February 15 |
| Memorial Day | Monday, May 31 |
| Juneteenth National Independence Day | Saturday, June 19 |
| Independence Day | Sunday, July 4 |
| Labor Day | Monday, September 6 |
| Columbus Day | Monday, October 11 |
| Veterans Day | Thursday, November 11 |
Watch the weekdays. In the 2026 season, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day both fall on a Friday, so each runs into a weekend. Decide whether that Saturday and Sunday count as holiday days or weekend days, and count each day once.
In 2027, Juneteenth, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day 2028 fall on a Saturday, and Independence Day on a Sunday. OPM states: “If a holiday falls on a Saturday, for most Federal employees, the preceding Friday will be treated as a holiday for pay and leave purposes.” For a Sunday holiday, it is the following Monday. OPM therefore lists Friday, June 18, Monday, July 5 and Friday, December 24 in its 2027 schedule, and Friday, December 31, 2027 for New Year’s Day 2028. Clinics and offices may close on the observed day while the hospital still needs call on the actual holiday, so decide which date your counters use.
Rotate the big holidays over several years
One year is too short to balance Tier 1. Take one call line and three Tier 1 units a season: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. A group of nine physicians needs three seasons for everyone to work one of them, and nine for everyone to work each of them once.
| Season | Thanksgiving | Christmas Day | New Year’s Day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-2027 | Physician 1 | Physician 2 | Physician 3 |
| 2027-2028 | Physician 4 | Physician 5 | Physician 6 |
| 2028-2029 | Physician 7 | Physician 8 | Physician 9 |
| 2029-2030 | Physician 2 | Physician 3 | Physician 1 |
Shift the order at each cycle so that no one is tied to the same holiday. A pairing rule helps too: whoever works Christmas Day is off on New Year’s Day, and the reverse.
Publish the rotation for the next seasons, not just this one, so that people can plan travel and family time. And keep the history: a rotation that lives only in one person’s memory starts over with every new scheduler.
Keep a holiday counter for each physician
The rotation says whose turn it is. The counter records who actually worked. For each physician and each tier, keep:
- the holiday units worked, over several years;
- the expected share, based on FTE;
- the difference between the two.
Count the physician who worked the shift, after swaps, not the one first assigned. And make the counters visible to the whole group: a counter only the scheduler can see settles no dispute.
Part-time physicians
Scale holiday call to FTE over the cycle, not within one holiday: nobody works 80% of Christmas Day. Take eight full-time physicians and one at 0.8 FTE, a sum of FTEs of 8.8. Over five seasons with three Tier 1 units each, 15 units in all, the expected share is about 1.7 units per full-time physician (15 ÷ 8.8) and about 1.4 for the physician at 0.8 FTE (15 × 0.8 ÷ 8.8). The counter shows who is ahead, and the next rotation corrects it.
New physicians
Decide in advance whether a new physician starts at zero or at the group average. Starting at zero puts them first in line for every holiday in their first year. Starting at the group average, or at a share prorated from their start date, is easier to defend.
Swaps and trading rules
Write these down before the season, and share them with the schedule:
- Trade within a tier. A Tier 1 unit for a Tier 1 unit. A trade across tiers needs a rule the group has agreed, for example one Tier 1 unit for two Tier 3 units.
- Approve before the date. Both physicians agree in writing, and the scheduler approves the trade before the shift.
- The counter follows the physician who works. When the rotation and the counter drift apart, the counter decides next season’s assignments.
- Set a deadline, for example two weeks before the holiday. After that, only illness or emergencies, covered through backup call.
- Let people trade on what matters to them. A colleague who does not celebrate Christmas may gladly work it in exchange for a day they care about. It is a normal trade, counted like any other.
For residents and fellows, every trade must also respect the ACGME limits, such as 80 hours a week averaged over four weeks and one day in seven free. See our explainer on the ACGME duty hours proposal for 2028 for the current rules and what may change.
From a spreadsheet to a shared schedule
Our physician call schedule guide explains a six-step method, and its free Excel template shades holidays and counts holiday calls per physician, next to each physician’s FTE-based share of calls. It lists the US federal holidays from 2026 to 2028, and you can edit the list. Holidays share one column per call line: if you use tiers, add a column per tier. In a spreadsheet, every trade is entered by hand, and the counter is only as good as the last update.
Momentum keeps night, weekend and holiday counters visible to the whole group and updates them with each swap. Physicians request time off and propose swaps from the mobile app or the web, and the scheduler sees the effect of a request before accepting it. Book a demo to see your own holiday rules at work.