I think there's some chaos involved. I don't know how YT is set up. But I've worked with database programmers during really busy holidays and sometimes when they run scripts there are some unintended consequences. These wholesale changes seem rushed so there is probably are some inconsistencies we are experiencing. Probably the result of doing a bunch of queries on a mass scale to weed out problem videos. Probably a lot of manual fixes. Undoing some mistakes. Re-running some scripts again, which could explain why videos are being monetized and demonitized and then monetized again. Probably some element of human error. A bunch of over worked weary eyes scrolling through eyeballs of data making snap decisions like "uhmm this looks good enough. 'click'" or a little bit of "whoops".
You might be on to something with this! Your post brought back a memory from back when I was working in consulting. The days right before Thanksgiving, and even more so with Christmas, were extremely stressful as far as hitting deadlines go. With Thanksgiving, folks check out on Wednesday and don't come back to follow up on work until the next week, and for Christmas you're not only dealing with folks leaving for 2 weeks, but also trying to cram everything in before the tax year ends. It wouldn't surprise me one bit of there are some exhausted coders and database managers flying by the seat of their pants to meet some deadline before the holidays hit. It really stinks for the "decent" kids channels, though.
Last year, I recall lots of strange algorithm changes happening around this time, so I wonder if these kinds of headaches can now be thought of as an annual end-of-year event to not look forward to...??