Courtesy of the Shaffer family

Tom Shaffer, a longtime bus driver and a senior training instructor for Greyhound, estimates he's worked 15 of the past 20 Christmases. He said his wife has adapted to his absences over the years because "she knows I love what I do."

Military service it is not: These workers expect to come home safe, and their absences are typically measured in days, not months.

But for thousands of pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, bus drivers, train conductors and other transportation employees, an un-jolly reality exists: Until they attain enough seniority, many of them can expect to spend anywhere from five to 25 years working on Christmas and other major holidays.

Faced with such an enduring buzzkill, transportation employees and their family members often get creative about when and how they celebrate. Sometimes Santa comes with great fanfare on, say, Dec. 19. Sometimes he rolls in with his reindeer (and gifts obtained at fabulous after-Christmas sales) on Dec. 28. But for many of them, Christmas consistently comes a day early or a day late — year after year after year.

That’s the situation Tom Shaffer has learned to accept along with his wife, their two sons and their extended family members who descend each Christmas on the Shaffer home in Rockwall, Texas. A longtime Greyhound bus driver and senior training instructor, Shaffer estimates he’s worked 15 of the past 20 Christmases — and this Dec. 25 will be no exception.

“I’ve just gotten used to it over the years,” said Shaffer, 56. “Greyhound is really, really busy during that time of year. My wife understands this is what I do and she’s grown accustomed to it and she’s accepted it. She knows I love what I do.”

Courtesy of the Shaffer family

Regina Shaffer, right, described her husband Tom Shaffer, left, as a "great person." "He's always so positive," she said. "I've learned a lot from him myself."

Opening gifts at different times
Indeed, everyone who knows Shaffer recognizes how much he loves his job and cares about his passengers. He takes great pains to make holiday bus rides cheery and upbeat.

“I like to be cheerful with everybody,” he said. “I make it my business to say, ‘You have a merry Christmas and a most happy and prosperous New Year’s.’ ... Sometimes people sing Christmas songs on the bus.”

Back at home, Shaffer’s family has found ways to adapt to his absence on pivotal Christmas mornings. They typically break with tradition and open special gifts at different times — sometimes on Dec. 24 before Shaffer has to leave town, or in the late afternoon or evening of Dec. 25 after he’s completed his bus route.

“Whatever we consider to be, you know, the big gift, we always want him to be here so he can see the reactions,” said Tom Shaffer’s wife, Regina Shaffer, 43.

Occasionally the “big gift” reveal happens late on Christmas day in front of as many as 20 members of the Shaffers’ extended family, and can result in special memories for everybody present. Last year, for instance, the Shaffers bought a telescope for their youngest son Jordan, who was 10 at the time. They were pretty confident their son, a space enthusiast, would love the gift — but his ecstatic reaction astonished everyone.

“We didn’t wrap it — we actually hid it and then set it up when he was in the back,” Regina Shaffer recalled. “When he saw it, his eyes were so big. He was almost crying and saying, ‘Thanks, Daddy! Thanks, Daddy!’ ... There wasn’t a dry eye in this house.”

Courtesy of the Shaffer family

Jordan Shaffer is pictured opening Christmas presents in 2009. Jordan, who is now 11 years old, delighted his family with his reaction to the gift of a telescope last Christmas.

Supporting, cheering fellow employees
A number of airlines provide priority travel passes to crew members so they can have a spouse or another close family member travel with them over the holidays. That way, if they have to spend Christmas in a strange city, at least they have their nearest and dearest along for the ride.

On an informal basis, senior airline workers will sometimes switch shifts with junior crew members who have small children. That way, the junior crew members can enjoy the Christmas morning experience at home.

No matter what, though, many moms and dads do end up working on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. Sometimes winter weather is to blame.

Capt. Mark Niles, a pilot for Horizon Air, recalls flying one year with a first officer who had been scheduled to make it home on Christmas Eve.

“We got delayed due to a really bad snowstorm,” said Niles, who lives in Portland, Ore. “She was telling her young son over the phone that Santa Claus had a special arrangement with pilots and flight attendants, and he knew when they had to be gone and he would still show up on the right day. ... That was kind of hard to listen to.”

Niles — who also serves as vice president of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations, an organization that represents 28,000 pilots — said he’s worked many major holidays during his 13 years with Horizon.

“I’m fairly junior as captains go in the grand scheme of things,” Niles said. “The junior guys are flying on holidays — that’s just how it is.

“In our case, we’ve done alternate days for Christmas, or for Thanksgiving we’ll plan to do it on a different day. Sometimes that works when you can coordinate with family, and sometimes it doesn’t. Then you just have your own little celebration with your immediate family.”

When transportation employees do have to spend the holidays with their “work families,” they usually enjoy special meals together. Greyhound provides traditional Christmas lunches or dinners to workers, and Delta does the same thing for gate agents, ticket agents, ramp workers, baggage handlers and other employees. American Airlines said teams of employees often create potluck, grassroots holiday celebrations with their co-workers.

Niles has fond memories of an unforgettable Thanksgiving meal he shared with fellow Horizon crew members about a decade ago.

“A crew member actually cooked the complete meal, with all the trimmings, and brought it with them in a cooler,” he said. “We were in a hotel in Boise with nothing open around us, and this person had taken care of the whole meal for all of us!

“It’s so great when you work with a really good crew and everybody kind of bands together for the holidays and does nice things for each other.”

Has a work schedule ever prompted your family to celebrate the holidays in different ways or on different days? Share your stories in the comments! 

Need a Coffey break? Friend TODAY.com writer Laura T. Coffey on Facebook, follow her on Twitter or read more of her stories at LauraTCoffey.com.

More on TODAY:

• Military parents come home for the holidays via reading
• Confessions of a mall Santa: Spit, snot and spreading cheer
• Video: Secret Santa pays Wal-Mart layaway bills for 53 families 
• Photos: Faces of Santa: See how St. Nick spreads holiday cheer around the world

Shopping online for all the birds in the classic "The 12 Days of Christmas" can be an exercise in patience and frustration. Plus it can be darned expensive.

We're sure you heard the big news: It now costs over $107,000 if you were to buy all the items listed in the "12 Days of Christmas" song, according to PNC Wealth Management's annual "Christmas Price Index," or "CPI" as it's so very cleverly referred to. But that's not the whole story, because six of the items in the list are birds.  

What if you really want to buy all those birds for your "true love," and you wanted to buy them them online?

PNC got their numbers for the birds from the National Aviary in Pittsburgh, and they, of course, don't have an online retail store. And where do you get a "French Hen," or a "Calling Bird," let alone four of them? 

Shopping for all the birds in the song online is a real budget buster, especially when you consider shipping. After all, you can't exactly get the supplies for shipping a live goose "a-laying" at Kinko's.

Many of the providers are small farms that have their own websites, and are listed here for example, and for humorous purposes. OK, mainly the latter. Another big caveat is that most hatcheries require you to place your order in advance for the next round of breeding and are already sold out for 2012. It's also a lot easier and cheaper to buy birds as chicks or eggs, and then grow them to size, rather than trying to buy and then having breeders ship an adult bird. For that you're better off driving up to a few farms to fill your order. So, start planning ahead for Christmas 2013!

Also, yes, PNC provides an index showing the online cost of buying these items that's costlier than the main index that gets reported. But it doesn't receive as much attention and we wanted to go check out the online prices ourselves and compare them to the central Christmas Price Index.

Last, owning another living creature is a right and a privilege and you shouldn't place any real orders, let alone as a joke, unless the recipient can truly care for it as long as they own it. 

That said, ho ho ho and fa la la la la, let's dive in.

7 Swans-a-Swimming

Swans mate for life, so to get seven you're going to need to buy eight. Maybe you can use the extra as backup in case one of the swans is a poor swimmer. Purelypoultry.com is a site for a small farm in Fremont, Wis., that also subcontracts orders to other hatcheries and breeders. It's like drop shipping for cygnets instead of cellphones. They sell pairs of black-necked swans directly online for $4,500, with a $400 shipping cost. Not to your doorstep, however, but to your local post office. It's not exactly the kind of item you can leave next to the newspaper and stable boy statue.

Let's not forget either that the swans are supposed to be "a-swimming." For that, you can get four kiddie pools on Amazon for $79.96. You need four because swans are very territorial. The National Aviary quoted $7,000, an 11.1 percent increase from last year, but our online shopping cart total came to $19,679.96.

The cost of this one item alone means you'll be well over $107,000 if you were to buy up all the items in the "12 days of Christmas" song.

6 Geese-A-Laying

There's a big problem with this part of the tune. Geese usually lay their eggs in the spring, and Christmas is usually in December. And by usually I mean always. So tell your true love that these geese will be "a-laying" in a few months from now.

Another note of discord is that in order to get six geese making goslings, you'll need a dozen geese in all. Six females, and six male partners, as geese are monogamous. At metzerfarms.com, they're sold out for 2012, so you might as well place an order for twelve goslings and grow them to size in time for the next holiday season. Prices for 2013 aren't set yet, but in 2012 it was twelve Roman Tufted goslings for $16.09 each, plus free shipping! That beats the National Aviary quoted price of $210 -- a 29.6 percent increase from last year, by the way, reflecting this year's drought and the ensuing skyrocketing price of grain. Total: $193.08

4 Calling Birds

What the heck is a "calling bird?" In the oldest extant written version of the song, the items in this verse were listed as "canary birds." Later versions switched it to "colly birds," "colly" being a term for "coal-covered," i.e. "blackbirds." That's sort of a weird holiday gift, so let's stick with those cute little chirpers. 

It was hard to find a reputable-looking online store selling canaries but there are a slew of private breeders. Caveat emptor in this dodgy world full of shady characters, so check out their selling history and ask for references. The cost range was $60-$100 per bird, plus around $40 shipping. Total: $280-$560, which means the National Aviary's price of $519.96 came in at the high end.

Their price was the same last year, perhaps reflecting stability and low costs in the domestic coal market.

3 French Hens

Hens? We got those. What makes a French hen? Does it wear a beret? Well how about the "Houdan," a breed of hen native to France, boasting an eye-catching mottled plumage, a large crest that makes it look like it's going to a masquerade ball, and five toes instead of the usual four. The French, always on the avante-garde of fashion.

Billing itself as "The Web's Source for Waterfowl, Chickens, and Game Birds," eFowl.com sells a minimum order of fifteen chicks for $2.59 each, plus a $9.99 small order charge for being under 26 chicks. Like the geese, you'll need to acquire these for the spring and raise them for your true love's holiday package by winter. Rearing them yourself and absorbing the corn costs handily saves you $116.16 off the Christmas Price Index. Total: $48.44

2 Turtle Doves

Turtle doves are a bit harder to come by. Strombergschickens.com listed pairs for $215 shipped, a bit pricier than the CPI listing of $125, but their farm isn't selling them anymore. However, a nationwide search of Craigslist turned up a guy in Michigan selling the deuce for $12. He didn't respond to inquiries about shipping, so we're left to assume you have to pick them up yourself. Total: $12, plus cost of plane ticket and car rental.

And a partridge... 

If you want to order partridges online, you'll have to get them as a chick or an egg, and you can't get just one. Every site we saw had a minimum of 30-50 partridges. Cacklehatchery had 30 at $2.67 each for $80.10, plus $23.10 shipped at 1 day of age and a guaranteed 2-3 day delivery. Total: $103.20, a bit more dear than the the CPI's $15.

...in a pear tree.

One 6-7 ft Ayers Pear Tree, large enough to support the weight of a partridge, could be had at The Nursery at Ty Ty for $59.75 plus $20 shipping. The CPI's cost listing was $189.99. Our Total: $79.75.

At shopping malls and big-box stores, it seems Christmas comes earlier and earlier every year.

Retailers claim they are simply responding to consumer demand. "Forty percent of our consumers that we surveyed have told us that they're shopping for the Christmas holidays already," said Mike Gatti of the National Retail Federation.

But retailers have other motivations, too. Concerns are growing that the global economy could be headed into another recession, and retailers did not exactly have a scintillating holiday season last year. The more sales they can lock up early, the easier the nation's retail executives will breathe.

Do you think Christmas in September is too early? Click to vote below.

Door busters. Early shopping hours. Buy one, get one free.

It's déjà vu all over again for shoppers who didn't get enough buying before the holidays, or for those dying to use gift cards they received. Retailers will be going after your dollars the day after Christmas on what some merchants call the second Black Friday,  even though it's actually Sunday.

JCPenney, Sears, Best Buy and Target are among the big retailers opening at 7 am on Sunday; and Target stores will be open until 11 pm. For those of you who want to shop from home, many retailers are extending free-shipping deals that were big before Santa arrived. Almost every store is boasting deep discounts. Unfortunately, expect to find slim pickings on the shelves because consumers reportedly shopped up a storm for the holidays. You might not find the color or size or brand you want, but you're sure to get a pretty good deal if you find something you like.

TINA FINEBERG / AP

There's a great story from The Associated Press on how to shop smartly the day after Christmas; and it looks like clothing, especially winter-wear, will be your best bet.

Who said the holidays have to end?

AFP - Getty Images

Christmas is popular in many Asian countries, including South Korea.

Christmas is just around the corner, and by now all your presents are no doubt wrapped and ready to go, but have you received a seasonal gift from your employer?

Probably not, because fewer than half of U.S. employers are likely to hand out Christmas gifts to their employees, according to a global survey of workers.

The practice apparently is far more prevalent in other countries, especially in northern Europe but also surprisingly in Asia, according to Randstad, a Dutch-based global staffing and human resources company.

In the United States, only 13 percent of those surveyed “strongly agreed” that their employer normally hands out Christmas gifts, while 31 percent “agreed,” for a total of 44 percent. A total of 41 percent expected to receive a gift this year from their employer.

By contrast in the Netherlands, where the practice appears to be widespread, nearly 80 percent of employees surveyed said they expected to receive a Christmas gift from their employer. The practice also appears relatively common in Scandinavian countries, Poland and Greece, according to the global Workmonitor survey.

But the country where year-end largesse seems most likely this year is China, which is known for its culture of gift-giving, if not for Christmas. A total of 88 percent of Chinese employees surveyed agreed or strongly agreed that they are likely to get a Christmas gift from their employer, and 95 percent said they expected to get a year-end financial bonus.

In India, 66 percent said they expected to get a Christmas gift. But in Japan only 12 percent of workers said they expected to get one.

We don’t want to draw any huge conclusions from this data, but we will simply note that the Netherlands also is the home to some of the world’s most satisfied workers, with 80 percent satisifed or very satisfied, according to the survey. In Japan, where economic growth has been virtually non-existent for a decade, only 6 percent of workers are very satisfied and another 33 percent say they are satisfied. U.S. workers rank fairly high on the satisfaction index, while Chinese workers rank low.

The quarterly Workmonitor, which has been around since 2003, covers 27 countries, with a minimum of 400 workers surveyed in each country. You can find recent editions at the Randstad website.

If you’re sitting down to Christmas dinner this Saturday, chances are you’ll pass the vegetables.

Vegetables are No. 1 on the list of top 10 foods and drinks Americans eat for Christmas dinner in all regions except the central U.S., according to data from market research group NPD.

There, potatoes take the top spot.

Americans seem to generally agree that a holiday dinner should have traditional items including potatoes, vegetables, poultry, ham and salads. But there are definitely some regional variations to the Christmas spread.

In the East, Italian dishes ranked ninth, while they are nowhere to be found elsewhere in the country. Similarly, tea took the ninth spot in the South but was absent elsewhere. And in the West, alcoholic beverages ranked ninth, but they didn’t make the cut anywhere else.

NPD compiled the data on Christmas eating habits using its database on in-home eating trends in the U.S.