Before retirement, I never took specifically annual vacations, even though I earned 30 days of vacation time every year for the last 30ish years. I only used extended vacation time on a few occasions during my working years, and for 3 main reasons: 1] I am a chronic workaholic, so it was difficult tearing myself away, 2] there are few places that I want to spend weeks on end visiting, and 3] I preferred breaking up my vacation days throughout the year and take two or three shorter breaks rather than one long one. There were, of course, some years in which we did just that, the long vacation. I never did 30 full days at once, I believe 22 was the longest.
Additionally, requests for time off extending for 15 calendar days or more required signed approval by upper management, a rule that was not always enforced for all employees, even though it was supposed to be across the board. Vacation days would have to be blocked out in early January for that new year, reflecting all the way to January 3rd of the next year. That way, seniority could dictate who would get major holidays off and who would remain in the salt mines. Anyone who had Thanksgiving one year could not get it the next year, the same for Christmas. Itineraries, tickets, reservations, etc had to be turned in ahead of time as proof of concrete plans.
I often had staycations, took the time off but stayed in my city of residence the whole time. Sometimes during a long staycation we would take one or more those short trips of a few days a few dozen or a few hundred miles from home, driving distance, and return home after a night or two.
And finally, an answer to exactly what you asked. We preferred September vacations whenever we wanted to travel truly long distances (often overseas), because schools would be newly in session, most other people were not vacationing, so there was less crowding, less waiting, etc. It didn’t take place more than half a dozen times in those three decades.
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