At this point the earliest you can officially request off for is dec 27th

time off requests are unpaid, and then you can write in the book the hours you want to use if you have vacation hours separately if you want it to be paid. it’s just a request to not be scheduled that day.

Your boss likely has already made the schedule for Christmas since it falls into the schedule that is two weeks from now. In the future, it’s best to put those requests in early (like at least a month ahead, I always try to put time off requests in as early as I can, but especially for holidays). And filling out the time off request just makes it so you don’t get scheduled, if you want to be paid vacation time you have to put those hours in the book and your manager will put that paid time in. I’m not sure it’s something all stores do, but I know mine does and I’ve seen several mention having a similar process that managers will put up a sheet for the various holidays and have a set number of holiday days that you need to be available to work. For us it was 4 of 6 (thanksgiving, Black Friday, Xmas Eve, Xmas, NYE, NYD) and then from that list your manager would make schedules trying to place only those people on each day that they signed up for.