answer:Where I last worked, it was first come, first serve. I don’t think there was an earliest date allowed. My boss had the opposite problem with us. She’d get mad that we weren’t scheduling any time for vacation and kind of press on us and make us pick times. When it came to the holidays, I think we let the person who had to travel by plane to see her family have the time off. The rest of us had local relatives. There were only 5 in our department, so maybe it was easier.