Actually, Clinton, my real advice is to start getting a Christmasparty/New Years eve set together and, as soon as possible, start making calls to get those bookings--If you want to work during the day, you can either work up solo instrumental versions of Christmas carols or find a flute/violin/reed playe/mando picker/Hawaiian steel player to cover the melody and find a gig for the month in a department store or mall.

And don't say you can't do Christmas music--you can do Xmas stuff in any Genre--I have got   Box Car Willie's Christmas Album, James Brown's Santa's Got a Brand New Bag, Tiny Tim's Christmas Album, and even "A Surfer Christmas", and that was just from bargain bins--

If you book yourself real solidly from Thanksgiving to New Years Eve(and even a bit after, as there are a lot of offices that hold their holiday party after the actual holidays are over) you may have made enough money to go somewhere warm for February, which, at least for me, was always the worst month for bookings--