Are "no work" holidays supposed to take away my work vacation days???

@SimGuruGeorge So what I understand is, that by taking vacation days for holidays we can still get paychecks on those days, but we can't actually create extended break holidays because then it'll take away all our vacation days and means that we won't get paychecks/school progress yet still remain in our current jobs/school grade? I'm trying to wrap my head around this.