They'll just threaten to fire anyone calling out on TG/DATG and Christmas Eve/New Years, etc.
The funny thing is that EVERYONE was required to work on Thanksgiving in our store last year. We had not a single blessed soul at our doors when we officially unlocked them, and a good five or ten minutes went by until the first few customers trickled in. You could see the crowds at Target and Best Buy near our store. After about an hour, we had some people coming in looking for TVs, probably because Target/Best Buy/Walmart, etc were sold out. They found out that we didn't have any and walked right back out.
Over in the warehouse, the backroom guys were basically standing around an hour after opening because just about all of their web orders had been pulled and processed, so I'm guessing online sales weren't so hot either. At around 5:30 PM, when I walked through the warehouse after being let in through the employee door, I told the backroom guys that I thought was "odd" that UPS picked up on Thanksgiving night because I assumed that they came by to pick up the orders they had boxed up since I didn't see a whole bunch of boxes and pushcarts all over the place like I had in years before. They told me that what I saw in front of me is all the orders that came through the system, nothing was picked up and that it was "pretty scary" since they were usually swamped with orders until about 10, but they were boxing up the last few orders before six and only had one person picking the orders off the floor since there wasn't near as much coming in compared to years past.
And yes, our store is miraculously open. Probably has a lot to do with the fact that we "own" our building and don't have to pay rent, We are in the a shopping center/mall with other, busier attractions, so our location would be ripe for the picking to be sold off for redevelopment, since we have this massive, empty parking lot in addition to the store itself. It might be a matter of time.
The upcoming holiday season will be the same again, if we make it that far, but EVERYONE will be required to work.
On the topic of perks - I wonder if the store holiday dinner budget will be taken away? I never ate because I brought my own food, but it's at least some kind of gesture to the other employees.