Rachel asked on the Monday before Thanksgiving, in passing, while packing lunch boxes: "You're coming to Ohio with us on Thursday, right? My parents can't wait to meet you."
Camila, her au pair from Colombia, stopped with a sandwich in her hand. She had spent three weeks planning a Friendsgiving with the other au pairs in her cluster. She had bought a dress for it. And in her head, Thanksgiving was a holiday, which meant a day off.
Rachel meant it kindly. She also assumed that "coming with us" included keeping an eye on a three-year-old and a seven-year-old in a house full of relatives. Camila assumed an invitation was an invitation. Nobody was wrong, and nobody had ever said anything out loud. The family had a schedule. They had house rules. They had never written down what happens on 26 November.
This post is the conversation Rachel and Camila should have had in October. It covers time off over the holidays, what happens to pay, what changes when you travel, and how to make a young adult feel included during their first American Thanksgiving and Christmas away from home.
🇺🇸 The examples lean towards the US, where Thanksgiving falls on 26 November this year. A section on Germany further down covers what the German Federal Employment Agency sheet says, and the full US picture is in our au pair rules for the United States. In both countries, always check the current rules with your agency or immigration authority.
Schedules, tasks and costs with your au pair, in one app.
The short answer
Neither country's au pair rules contain a list of public holidays that the au pair must have off. That surprises many families, so here is what the sources do say.
| USA 🇺🇸 | Germany 🇩🇪 | |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly time off | At least 1.5 days per week, plus one complete weekend per month (22 CFR § 62.31(j)) | At least 1.5 full rest days per week, at least one Sunday per month free, at least four free evenings per week (BA information sheet 1.3) |
| Paid vacation | Two weeks (22 CFR § 62.31(j)) | Four weeks for a full year, otherwise two working days per full month (BA 1.4) |
| Hours | At most 10 per day and 45 per week | In principle at most 6 per day and 30 per week (BA 1.3) |
| Public holidays | Not mentioned | Not mentioned |
| Pay | Weekly rate based on 45 hours of child care per week (22 CFR § 62.31(j)) | Pocket money of €280 a month, "regardless of the duration of the housework time" (BA 1.7) |
So a holiday is not automatically a day off, and it is not automatically a working day either. It is whatever the family and the au pair agree, inside the weekly floor of time off and the hour limits. That is good news if you write it down, and a source of resentment if you do not.
Key takeaway: The rules give you a floor, not a holiday calendar. Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year's Day are decisions you make with your au pair, and the earlier you make them, the less they feel like favours.
Which days does your au pair get off?
Start with the days that matter most to you and to them, then work backwards. For most families this year that means three dates:
- Thanksgiving, Thursday 26 November.
- Christmas, Friday 25 December (and Christmas Eve, Thursday 24 December, which matters a lot to au pairs from countries that celebrate on the evening of the 24th).
- New Year's Day, Friday 1 January 2027.
Check your own calendar for religious holidays that matter to your au pair, too. The German sheet says an au pair is to be released for religious observance ("Religionsausübung", BA 1.3), and while that is the German rule, it is a sensible standard anywhere.
Three questions to settle per holiday
- Is the au pair working that day, partly or not at all? Say the hours: "off from Wednesday 6 p.m. until Friday 8 a.m." is clearer than "off for Thanksgiving".
- Does the day count as one of the weekly days off, as vacation, or as an extra gift of time? This is where most disagreements start. If you want the holiday to be a bonus, say that it is not deducted from the vacation weeks. That is our advice, not a rule.
- Who decides if plans change? If your travel plans shift, how much notice does the au pair get before the day becomes a work day?
Because the regulation gives no list of days, many families fall back on "what we did last year". Do not do that with a new au pair. Their idea of a normal Thanksgiving comes from home, and in Colombia, Brazil, Germany or South Africa the answer may be quite different.
A simple holiday plan for the household
Put one page together by early November. It does not need to be fancy:
- Dates and hours: for each holiday, who works when.
- Travel: which trips the au pair joins, and which ones are working days or holiday days (see the next sections).
- School breaks: the days the children are home all day, and who covers them.
- The au pair's own vacation: which of the two (or four) paid weeks they would like to use around the holidays.
Sharing this as a calendar both of you can see is better than a note on the fridge. We come back to that near the end.
Pay over the holidays
Short version: the stipend does not change because it is a holiday. The longer version depends on what you checked.
In the US, the regulation says au pairs are paid a weekly rate "based upon 45 hours of child care services per week" in line with the Fair Labor Standards Act (22 CFR § 62.31(j)(1)). It does not mention holiday pay, and it does not talk about reducing the weekly rate in a week when the au pair works less. The sponsor enforces the stipend and hours rules, so if you are unsure whether a short working week affects the stipend in your case, ask your sponsor before you pay, not afterwards. Our guide to expenses and pocket money explains what the stipend covers.
In Germany, the information sheet puts it plainly: the pocket money is €280 a month "regardless of the duration of the housework time" (BA 1.7). A week of days off does not shorten it.
What this means in practice:
- A holiday off is not a pay cut. Nobody should lose money because Thanksgiving fell on a working day and you gave the day off.
- A holiday worked is not extra money by rule. The weekly stipend is not an hourly wage, and neither country's rules set a holiday premium for au pairs. If your au pair works a holiday, hours still count towards the weekly limit, and offering a day off in return is the fair thing to do. Hours above the limit are the real problem; our post on counting the 45-hour week shows how to track them.
- Gifts and bonuses are a separate topic. A year-end gift is welcome, but it is not holiday pay and must not replace anything the au pair is owed.
Key takeaway: Time off and pay move independently. Give the day off without touching the stipend, and if you ask for extra work, give the time back.
When the family travels
This is where Rachel and Camila got stuck. If the au pair joins you for Thanksgiving at your parents' house, the question is not "is she invited?" but "is she working?"
The German sheet is useful as a mental model even if you live elsewhere. A family holiday counts as the au pair's own vacation "only if merely insignificant tasks have to be done and there is no duty to be present" (BA 1.4, our translation). If the au pair is expected to watch the children, it is a work trip with a nice dinner at the end.
Our vacation and travel rules guide walks through the on-duty and off-duty test in detail. The short form:
- Can the au pair say "I would rather not, I have plans" without it being a problem?
- Can she physically leave and do something else?
- Are the children someone else's job for these hours?
If all three answers are yes, she is off duty. One no, and those hours are work and count against the weekly limit.
Three ways it can go
- She stays home. Common for au pairs with friends nearby. This is a real day off, and she should not be on call for the kids.
- She joins as a guest. Say clearly that she is a guest for the meal, and that the grandparents and parents handle the children. The au pair eats with everyone and has no duties.
- She joins and works part of the day. This is a normal working day somewhere else. Write down the hours before you leave, and give her a window to call home.
What to avoid is the in-between: "of course you're off, just keep an eye on the kids while we cook". That is work, and it is the sentence most au pairs hear and rarely challenge.
If you travel without her
If the family goes away and the au pair stays behind, she is still living in your house. Tell her whether it is her vacation (and counts against her paid weeks), a holiday you give on top, or a work week with fewer children. For a trip abroad the family is paying for, the practical details such as insurance and documents are in the vacation guide linked above.
School breaks and hours
Holidays often mean the children are at home when they would usually be at school. That pushes up the hours without anyone noticing.
A week in late December with two children at home all day can easily take an au pair past the 10-hour day or the 45-hour week in the US, or past the 6-hour day and 30-hour week that apply in principle in Germany. The limits do not pause for Christmas.
Plan these weeks as you would plan an unusual work week:
- Count the hours before the break starts. Write down the actual days, school closure dates and parent work days.
- Find the gaps early. If the hours do not fit, line up a grandparent, a sitter, a holiday programme or your own leave.
- Do not pay with goodwill. "She was happy to help" is not a plan, and a tired au pair in January is the usual result.
Our schedule guide has a template for a week of this kind, and the house rules post explains how to document who covers what.
The au pair's own vacation
Many au pairs want to travel home or see another part of the country in late December. Their paid vacation is an entitlement, not a request for permission, but dates are agreed. The usual courtesy is several weeks of notice. The earlier you ask, the more likely both sides find dates that work. Our post on time-off requests covers how to handle competing requests, for instance if you also want to travel in the same week.
If you know now that you need the au pair in the last week of December, say so in November, and offer another window in return.
Germany: Weihnachten and the rest
🇩🇪 This section covers Germany. The information comes from the Federal Employment Agency's au pair information sheet (April 2023).
The BA sheet sets the hours and rest days listed in the table above and says nothing about public holidays. In practice that means the same rule: agree the days, in writing. A few German specifics:
- Christmas Eve and the days after. The sheet requires at least four free evenings a week and one Sunday a month. It does not say 24 December is free, so decide together.
- Overtime must be compensated with time. If an extra holiday day is worked, the sheet says overtime has to be balanced out with time off ("Die Überstunden müssen zeitlich ausgeglichen werden", BA 1.3).
- Family holidays. The same rule as above applies: the trip only counts as vacation if the au pair has no real duties.
- Notice for a vacation. Four weeks for a full year in Germany is a longer entitlement than in the US, so agree early how to place it.
For the exact numbers for your au pair's stay, the vacation calculator shows the days from the arrival and departure dates, with the source for each figure.
Making them feel at home
Time off and pay are the logistics. The harder question is what the holidays feel like to a 20-year-old who is hundreds or thousands of miles from her family.
We wrote about the first weeks of being away in our post on homesickness. The holidays are a peak for it. The first Thanksgiving or Christmas is when a good placement can feel lonely, even when nothing is wrong.
Ask before you plan
Do not assume. A few questions in early November change a lot:
- "What do you do at home on the day?" In some countries the main meal is on Christmas Eve, in others on Christmas Day.
- "What would make the day feel right?" Some au pairs want a quiet day with a video call, some want a full family day.
- "Is there anything you would like to cook or show us?" A dish from home on the table does more than any gift.
Invite, do not require
An invitation to the table should feel like one. Make it possible to say no, and mean it. If she wants to spend part of the day with her cluster friends or on a call with her family, that is her time off.
Protect the call home
Time zones matter on holidays. If her family is six hours ahead, a Christmas dinner at your table may land at midnight for them. Check the evening is free so she can speak to her family, and avoid scheduling work hours across the time when her family is awake.
Small rituals help
- A stocking with her name on it, if you do stockings.
- An invitation to decorate, bake, or pick the tree, without a task list attached.
- A note that tells her what to expect: which relatives come, what is served, how formal the day is.
The cultural exchange activities post has more ideas for sharing traditions in both directions, because the exchange also runs the other way: her own traditions are worth asking about.
Key takeaway: Inclusion is an invitation with an exit door. If your au pair has to explain why she wants a quiet day, the invitation was a duty in disguise.
Common holiday mix-ups
- "We thought she'd come along." The fix is the three-way choice above: stay, guest, or work.
- "She assumed public holidays are on top of vacation." Say in the contract or the first-week talk how holidays are handled. Our post on written agreements shows what else to put in.
- "We did not know the hours added up." Count holiday weeks like any other week.
- "We forgot to ask what she wanted." Spend ten minutes on it in the weekly check-in.
Your holiday checklist
- Early November: ask your au pair what the holidays mean to her, and what she would like to do.
- Mid-November: agree the days off, the work days, the travel plan and the hours, in writing.
- Before the school break: count the hours for the weeks the children are home, and book backup care for the gaps.
- Two weeks before Thanksgiving and Christmas: confirm the plan again, and tell her who she will meet.
- On the day: make sure she has time to call home, and that nobody asks her to "just quickly" work.
- After: ask what worked, and write down what you will do next year.
A shared schedule makes most of this easier. In AuPairSync, you can mark holidays as work days or days off, add her vacation blocks and your own travel dates, and both of you see the same plan on your phones. It will not decide the questions for you, but it makes the agreement visible so nobody has to rely on memory in the week before Thanksgiving.
Regulations change. The information in this article reflects the rules and sources linked above as of the publish date. Always verify current requirements with your placement agency or immigration authority.
The bigger picture
Camila did go to the Friendsgiving in the end. Rachel moved the Ohio trip to Friday and asked Camila to join for Saturday's lunch if she felt like it. She did, and Rachel's mother sent her home with a pie.
Holidays are small tests of a placement. Anyone can follow a weekly schedule. What an au pair remembers about the year is whether she was treated as a member of the household or as a rota on the fridge. Ten minutes of planning in early November is a cheap way to land on the right side of that.
Planning the holidays with your au pair? Download AuPairSync to keep time off, travel days and the weekly schedule in one place both of you can see.
