If you`re all on leave over that period treat it as a night out for the band, arrange to be driven there if at all possible, have a social, a laugh and hope that as it`s over the festive period there are more people out than usually would be.
Sometimes the benefits can be different than financial, when my old band started out we were doing multi-genre gigs (which the others hated doing, as did I) but I insisted we did them, we got used to working as a unit in front of an audience we didn`t want or need to impress but we perfected how we worked so that once we were gigging to the audiences we wanted we were much better. Playing wise we didn`t change that much but we got used to how each other set up/broke down equipment, what was needed in monitors, who needed prompts on set-lists etc, all things like that, we gained in experience as a unit.