QUOTE (Peap @ Oct 25 2008, 11:10 AM)

to be home for christmas instead of if basic...

If you're in Basic Training - most likely you won't be able to go on leave. If you're through with Basic and attending 'A' school, you'll probably be eligible for leave.
If you're in Basic - don't fret too much about the Christmas break. Your DI's and the staff know what it's like to be away from home during that time of the year, so you'll have some time off to relax during that time. Plus, they'll have some kind of program where you can leave base to spend some time with some families who sponsor military members for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and stuff. It won't suck as bad as you think... trust me.
The only bad thing is by starting Basic in the fall, you won't have much leave saved up around Christmas time - you'll go 'in the hole' if you take leave over the Christmas break - and that's no fun down the line when you 'need' to take some leave... it'll take forever to accrue enough to have any 'real' time off. You get something like 30 days of annual leave, well... annually... and that's it.
When I went through Air Force Basic Training (Oct '86) and landed at Tech School the 1st week of December, I opted to just stay put during the Christmas break and not only conserve my leave, but saved up enough money for a plane ticket home and then to my first base, and took two weeks of leave - that worked out where I had 2 days of leave left over, and I was partially re-imbursed for my air travel, since the military pays for relocations (on orders). Not to mention, my hair had actually grown back enough that I didn't look like a doofus with a tennis-ball haircut when I was home on leave during the dead of winter.
Christmas break was a ball. Yeah, we were still on-duty, but it was mega-light duty - our day consisted of getting up and having the dorms squared away by 0900, formation for daily briefings, and released for the day, unless someone had CQ or "Watch Officer" duty. It gave us a chance to really hang out and relax with our new buddies - which was cool.
Your call, and I suppose if you have a large family, a Christmas at home would be more important to you than it was to me. My birthday is New Years Eve, so I also typically worked on Christmas day (so the other guys could spend time with their families), and usually got rawked on my B-Day. To this day, I still have yet to work on my B-Day - and I haven't ever taken leave to do so. You'll learn how to work the system to your benefit - usually if you have slightly different goals than everybody else, you'll get a lot more things going your way.
Good luck either way - I know you're coming up on departure pretty quick. Keep us posted as you can.