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[callisto8413]

My populace of my current village are not ALL stressed out.  But a large part of them could do with a rest.  I was thinking of canceling most of the work orders, but for some crafts, allowing them straggered military training, and letting them finish current construction projects.  They should, in other words, have plenty of time to rest, sleep, visit the temples and Guildhall, and also go to the taverns to drink and socialize.  And get killed by dinosaurs if that floats their boat.  Would that help with the stress if I made it a whole season Holiday?  Three months?  We have a TON of food and drink.  Thousands of units.  SO I don't see them starving or anything ilike that.  My worry is some of them might get bored instead of chill.  I know Kmuggsmash does stuff like that and it seems to work.  Maybe try it just as a test and see what happens?

[Telgin]

I've never tried anything like this but would be curious to hear what the effects are.  I would expect it to lead to a lot more people socializing in the various meeting halls, and based on what I've heard the impact of unfulfilled needs for crafting are tiny so I'd expect any negative impact to be negligible.

[delphonso]

Yeah, I've done this in a few forts, originally to free up hands for caravans, then later just because I didn't know what else to do with them. As far as actually effects - I don't think there's a clear impact. Dwarves like to be busy and some can get bad thoughts from chatting/socializing. Plus Kruggsmash had the issue where if there was a fight in the tavern during that break /every/ dwarf would get traumatized instead of just a few. It does help with forming relationships since the updates to that whole thing (47.03 maybe?) and that can have knock on benefits.

Bottom line: ehhhh why not?

[anewaname]

I do this sort of thing after bad events. Gates are locked, large work orders are suspended, some labor groups are turned off, and barracks and squad schedules deactivated. After a couple of months, flip it all back on.

[brewer bob]

I have regularly 2-3 months off each year in my forts. Usually I have a set season, but if there's a bad event, I do it right after to de-stress the dwarfs.

There's more socializing during vacations and some decrease in stress values. There's always the couple of dwarfs who don't like it (e.g. get bad thoughts, like delphonso pointed), but I haven't seen any big negative impact. So at least in my experiences it's overall more beneficial to have vacations than not. (Before the rain stress fix of 0.47.05, this was practically necessary if you wanted a surface fort to survive longer than 5-7 years, iirc.)

...Oh, and these experiences are from pre-Steam. Don't know what's the situation currently.

[callisto8413]

Tried it.  The unhappy people were still, kind of, unhappy.  While the happy, or semi-happy, were made slightly happier?  I think once a dwarf starts going downhill it is hard to turn them around.

[Telgin]

That's been my general experience too.  Rarely, it seems you'll get a dwarf who is just a miserable pile of emotions who can't really be fixed.  I managed to fix one once by assigning him to a military squad by himself with a limited training schedule so he'd get happy thoughts and need fulfilment from practicing martial skills.  After like a year he finally stopped being haggard and slipping into periodic depression.

I only cared enough to check his preferences because he was a necromancer and my mayor, and I was kind of afraid to see what would happen if he started throwing tantrums, killed someone, and raised them as a zombie.

The others I've had like this didn't respond to my attempts to cure them, and after they started starting fist fights and killing people I just had to banish them.

[Salmeuk]

Now, while the above commenters might suggest mixed effects, I would posit a different sort of holiday: a visit to the waterpark AKA dwarven bathhouses AKA some muddy water haphazardly dripping from aquiferous soils

if you give your dwarves plenty of time to dwell within this liquid dopamine spray, then all ills will fade. Any remaining spoilsports should be evicted before they infect others with their depressive tendencies... unless you take it upon yourself to make every dwarf happy, then, well, I'm sure that dwarf's obsession with fried nautilus dumplings is totally normal and should definitely be enabled.