We have scheduled shifts in my department. If a holiday falls on your duty day, you are expected to be on duty for your shift or find coverage if you want to be off. Thankfully, with this policy, staffing has not been a problem on holidays.
we never have problems with staffing our stations. as a station officer we try and talk to the other station to see if they need help or if i will need help. all our volunteers are really good at helping each other out. now if it was a big fire our chiefs would come. our chiefs are good at listening to the pagers for the calls. so i would have to say no we have no problems during holidays.
Our chief usually asks who will be around for the holidays just so he has some idea who will be available. Yet he knows he has plenty of us to show up still if there is a call even during the holidays. Last Christmas for instance we had a report of a fire which turned out to be nothing, but we rolled every truck fully staffed with no problems getting them filled.