The world most certainly does not press pause for two weeks over Christmas. It's one of the busiest times of the year for retail, business, and travel industries. Manufacturing operations keep running as normal.

Just because office workers get a holiday, doesn't mean the whole world is on pause. This is nothing like Christmas.

Truck traffic cuts waaaay down between Christmas and New Years.

Fun fact: Truck traffic is waaaay up right now, as JIT inventories have depleted many grocery staples. Also, Amazon.

I wouldn't think Christmas is similar to these past two weeks in terms of volume driven. Many people still drive to work during Christmas, and some even drive more, to get to relatives' places. Not to mention, air travel probably rises significantly. Right now, car travel and air travel are low.

Yes. Actually during Christmas break, me and my friends in Michigan drive A LOT!! For breakfast coffees, then casual hangouts at places like zoos/museums, then for lunch, then for coffee again, then for dinner, all of us in separate cars.

Of. course that's not everyday, but it's many days. When we're back home from college, it's nice to see the friends from back home, and often it will involve all of us driving separate cars. This is I believe archetypical of the Midwest.

Why don't you just walk around instead of all that driving?

I think it's quite hard to reach all the places you may want to go if you just walk if you're in a suburban midwestern town. Really wish we could come up with reasonable non-driving communities. More small towns and villages. My college was situated such that you could walk to classes, bookstores, coffee shops, and groceries comfortably. Wish there were setups like this outside of colleges.

Around Christmas in Michigan, the temperature hovers around 0C.

The person you're replying to is describing about 30 miles of travel, at a rough estimate.

So, there's your answer.

0C (32F) sounds high for anything but daytime high temperatures.

True when I was growing up, recently it's an over-under. Hard freeze isn't reliable until first week of January.

I meant walking to some nearby places instead of driving to far-away ones.

Christmas you would most likely see a significant rise in activity and pollution as people mass travel, mass consume, and mass buy. How many turkeys were slaughtered for Christmas dinner? That's activity for the entire food chain.

For ALL of the service industries, Christmas and New Year are when they make a huge bulk of revenue.

Christmas is only a break for those who are privileged. Talk to you neighbourhood restaurant server. Ask them how restful Christmas season is and they will tell you that Christmas is their most stressful time in the entire year.