holiday

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noun

A regularly scheduled period spent away from work or duty, often in recreation: furlough, leave², vacation. See work/play.

Definition: celebration
Antonyms: work day

n. an unintentional omission in imagery coverage of an area.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Orchestral work by Ives assembled from Washington's Birthday (1909), Decoration Day (1912), The Fourth of July (1913) and Thanksgiving and/or Forefathers' Day (1904).

Holidays are "holy days," when people interrupt the profane, mundane round of production and celebrate with the preparation and eating of special foods and meals. The two basic forms of holidays are a festival (from Latin festum for 'feast'), when people break their normal weekly, monthly, or annual routine to celebrate together, and a vacation (in the sense of leaving their homes and workplaces empty), when an often longer disruption may be accompanied by dislocation, as people change residences or travel.

Festivals

Traditionally, festivals have enjoyed an explicitly religious interpretation, so that the Sabbath of Jews, Christians, and Muslims is a God-ordained day of rest. Many holidays have been associated with seasonal change, and the New Year is celebrated in many calendars, notably the Chinese, with brilliant feasts. Other festivals have been national, ordered by governments to honor founding events and heroes, such as Bastille Day (14 July) in France. Further holidays might commemorate children, an emperor's birthday, the achievements of war veterans or the working class. Australians take legislated days off for horse races.

Festival foods often feature in cookery books, such as the multivolume Foods and the World series of Time-Life (1968–1971). Conversely, festival foods are often described in surveys of holidays around the world, such as Holidays and Festivals (1999). Traditionally, women have worked together for several days on elaborate preparations, such as finely decorated confectionery and pastries, which have been keenly anticipated each year and have long remained poignant reminders of local, ethnic, and religious affiliations.

Eating and drinking might become especially abundant at harvest festivals and the breaking of a fast, as when Carnival concludes the Christian Lent and at the end of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim year. Particular foods might be featured, such as the lamb and unleavened bread of the Jewish Passover. The Hindu festival of lights, Divali, celebrates the longest night of the year (which falls in October or November in the Western calendar) with gifts of sweets, which vary immensely across the subcontinent. The Scottish haggis, which is a boiled sheep's stomach stuffed with mutton offal and oats, is a triumph of symbolic grandeur if not culinary, typical of midwinter and so featuring at hogmanay (New Year's Eve) and again on Burns Night (25 January), which commemorates the birthday of poet Robert Burns, who praised the haggis as the "great chieftain o' the puddin'-race."

Thanksgiving (the last Thursday in November) is a national American feast on which families dine on turkey and traditional accompaniments. The warmer weather of Independence Day (4 July) encourages parades and more casual, outdoor eating, especially barbecued chicken and perhaps an apple pie or red, white, and blue cake. Particular foods tend not to be associated with newer holidays, and yet the community mindedness of Martin Luther King's Day (the third Monday in January) might be reflected in sharing minority cuisines and decorating paper bags for food deliveries to the needy.

Vacations

Monarchs frequently took their court on an extended voyage through the countryside from palace to palace. Other leisured classes have long avoided either extreme of temperature by "summering" or "wintering" at an alternate house or resort. With the expansion of rail and road networks and the democratization of the annual break, more people took vacations. They could grow up knowing life on the farm from childhood holidays spent with cousins, could visit distant relatives when several national holidays coincide (such as Christmas–New Year's and the Japanese "Golden Week"), and could experience the products of hotel, restaurant, and other kitchens, sometimes in foreign countries, where everything might be closed for an unexpected holiday of pageantry and feasting.

The Effect of Globalization on Holidays

Whether in premodern China, ancient Rome, medieval Europe, or modern industrial societies, the proportion of holidays has remained remarkably constant—approximately one day in three. However, with globalization, and more continuous production and consumption, fewer collective breaks are observed. The seasonal emphasis is giving way to consumer weekends, a few national days, plus individual annual leave. Religious feasts are losing out to sport and entertainment, gift-giving breaks such as Christmas are commercially exploited, and vacations are serviced by organized leisure and tourism industries.

The innocent "holiday mood," which has been relished not just by the holidaymakers but novelists and screenwriters, is in danger of being lost. Holidays provide scenic locations, laid-back atmospheres, and breaks in everyday routines for the unexpected to happen. A gem of the French cinema, Jean Renoir's Une partie de campagne (often translated as A Day in the Country, 1936/46), centers around a Parisian family picnic at a country inn, during which two men invite the mother and betrothed daughter to go boating. In Le Rayon vert (The Green Ray or Summer, 1986), director Eric Rohmer shifts his listless heroine to various French holiday destinations, and she memorably justifies her vegetarianism over an outdoor lunch. Hollywood has often taken teenagers on summer holidays for lessons in growing up, their chosen meal typically milkshakes and hamburgers.

The association between holidays and foods may be lessening, yet it persists in many ways, and understanding the genesis of holidays assists in continuing to reinvent them.

Explaining Holidays

The Russian author Mikhail Bakhtin in Rabelais and His World (1968) analyzed the carnivalesque, the inversions when aristocrats and servants change places, when scatological humor temporarily undermines the dominant ideology, and when eating reappears as a "grotesque" reality. More conventionally, such boisterous breaks as Mardi Gras are often said to "release" pent-up energy that might otherwise be destructive.

Other social scientists have viewed holy days as "sacred" moments that give shape to otherwise "profane" time. Developing this approach from Émile Durkheim, anthropologist Edmund Leach asks in "Two Essays concerning the Symbolic Representation of Time" (1961) why people dress up in "false noses" or, more precisely, adopt three types of behavior: increased formality (such as an English Sunday), masquerade (New Year's Eve revelry), and role reversal (Mardi Gras). He then argues that such activities generate and reinforce sacred time (so that "transgressive" and "sacred" accounts are not so different). Such holidays contribute to social cohesion, not only reinforcing a common interpretation of the world, but also facilitating a rhythmic pattern of activities and so the "ordering of time."

Food is then usually regarded as "symbolic" of sacred time. Yet the inverse often makes better sense because holidays are grounded in cycles of food production. The interruption in "profane" routine by joy, revelry, or contemplation generates the holy. A harvest festival is an obvious case, when an intense burst of consumption follows a busy period of gathering and preserving, and when people are no doubt so profoundly thankful that they bring these crops before the gods.

Likewise, lamb might "represent" Easter, but while offering first fruits might come to "symbolize" spring, before that, the rejoicing at their arrival generates the concept of spring. The word "Easter" comes from the old English easter or eastre, a festival of spring, and its lambs, eggs, and rabbits are more than mere "symbols" of spring; they are spring. The Jewish festival of Passover derives from the Hebrew's nomadic origins, when the new growth would have supported extended gatherings, celebrated by sacrificing some of the newly increased flock. Since Jesus had been put to death around the time of Passover, Christians adopted the symbolism of Jesus as a sacrificial lamb.

The trappings of Christmas belong to the phalanx of "pagan" midwinter festivals; the merrymaking and exchange of presents join the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia and other cheering anticipations of cornucopia. With no certain tradition as to the date of Jesus' birth, Emperor Constantine chose the winter solstice, possibly to "compete" with the other festival, as often stated, but more likely to place Jesus' birthday appropriately at the beginning of the year.

Not only the seasonal festivals but also the weekly are based on the food supply. In different cultures, weeks have comprised three, four, five, six, seven, ten, or other number of days. With few exceptions, these have been organized around the market cycle. A strict periodicity must be maintained for both the circuit of sellers and the attendance of buyers. The Christian world took the seven-day week from the Jews, who had adopted it from the Babylonians.

Marking out the market week and seasonal year, festivals dramatize the cycles of food production and consumption upon which our survival depends. The feasts become time-keeping devices, proto-calendars. For, in another inversion of a common assumption, holy days were not the products of formal calendars, but their antecedents. Festivals originally had ecological dates, because they related closely to winter scarcity, bud-burst, arrival of flocks of birds or schools of fish, the weakening of the monsoon, and other natural cues. With precise astronomical observations, central authorities then created rational calendars and so, eventually, more "exact" festivals.

Upholding Holidays

Commercialism has boosted Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and others. Among ancient holidays that have gained new life, Valentine's Day encourages couples to dine out, and Japanese women to give chocolates. The food and drink industries have introduced a range of festivals, not the least the return of weekend farmers' markets, and annual food and wine fairs replete with tastings and grand banquets.

The mobility of global populations might have made many holidays anachronistic in that traditional meals are out of season; for example, Christmas turkey and plum pudding are absurd in the middle of the hottest days, as happens in the Southern Hemisphere. Yet people adapt, and many Australians enjoy the heavy fare during their winter, on 25 June or 25 July (for some reason, seven months out seems to be preferred). People invent their own rituals to surround a global television event, such as the annual telecast of the Academy Awards.

The individualization of holidays encourages new approaches. The registration of precise dates of birth has helped make this an important anniversary; many people ask for their birthday off from work, and even attach an appropriately seasonal food or meal. Married couples, probably having conducted much of their courtship over dinner, having founded their new household at a wedding breakfast, and then having gone on a honeymoon, celebrate wedding anniversaries at a romantic dinner at a restaurant or weekend retreat. Perhaps they celebrate other milestones, such as the departure of children from the "nest." People take other rites of passage seriously, such as reaching adulthood at the age of eighteen or twenty-one.

Influential American and British cookery writers discovered the joys of traditional European cuisines on sojourns after World War II. Many others now make an annual gastronomic tour, steered by the "stars" in restaurant guidebooks. Food and wine-producing areas have become tourist attractions. Enthusiasts take cooking lessons in Tuscan villas.

More modestly, a holiday is a chance to catch up with household chores, for a city worker to spend time in the kitchen, or for everyone to go on a picnic. People shift to a beach or mountain house to get away from the clamor of newspapers, television, and junk mail, and go fishing or hunting. Stressed workers still need time to read, to chat over coffee, to walk along the beach, to linger over meals, to philosophize into the night. Even more fundamentally, human beings need to keep in touch with the seasons. Given the range of the world's climates, clinging to the best local products is a force for difference.

Bibliography

Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1984.

Editors of Time-Life Books. Foods of the World. 27 volumes. New York: Time-Life Books, 1968–1971.

Holidays and Festivals. New York: Macmillan Library Reference, 1999.

Leach, Edmund. "Two Essays Concerning the Symbolic Representation of Time: (1) Cronus and Chronos (2) Time and False Noses." In Rethinking Anthropology, pp. 124–136. London: Athlone Press, University of London Press, 1961.

Tun, Li-ch'ên. Annual Customs and Festivals in Peking. Translated by Derk Bodde. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1965.

Zerubavel, Eviatar. Hidden Rhythms: Schedules and Calendars inSocial Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.

—Michael Symons

A day of recreation; a consecrated day; a day set apart for the suspension of business.

A legal holiday is a day set aside by statute for recreation, the cessation of work, or religious observance. It is a day that is legally designated as exempt from the conduct of all judicial proceedings, service of process, and the demand and protest of commercial paper. A prohibition against conducting public business transactions on holidays does not, however, have an effect upon private business. Private transactions will not, therefore, be invalidated solely because they are conducted on a holiday.

Tutor's tip: The "holy day" (an important religious commemoration) is a "holiday" (a day off from work or school to celebrate or vacation.).

LearnThatWord.com is a free vocabulary and spelling program where you only pay for results!

• Celebrations, Observances, Rites, and Gatherings - holiday: day commemorating an event, usu. by suspension of work and other regular activities; Chiefly Brit. vacation
• Vacations and Interludes - holiday: Chiefly Brit. vacation away from home

This article is about days of observance. For a leave of absence or a trip, see Vacation. For leave from employment, see Annual leave. For other uses, see Holiday (disambiguation).

"Observance" redirects here. For other uses, see Observance (disambiguation).

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008)

A Holiday is a day designated as having special significance for which individuals, a government, or a religious group have deemed that observance is warranted. It is generally an official (more common) or unofficial observance of religious, national, or cultural significance, often accompanied by celebrations or festivities. A holiday does not necessarily exclude doing normal work: the relatively minor Jewish holiday of Chanukah has been described as a "working holiday"^[1] and those who celebrate a holiday such as Diwali may have to work a normal schedule in countries where it is not a public holiday.

Contents 1 Etymology 2 Regional meaning 2.1 Australia, Canada, UK 2.2 United States 2.3 India 3 Types of holiday (observance) 3.1 Religious holidays 3.2 Northern Hemisphere winter holidays 3.3 National holidays 3.4 Secular holidays 3.5 Unofficial holidays 4 Opposition 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 External links

Etymology

The word holiday derived from the notion of "Holy Day", and gradually evolved to its current form.

The word holiday comes from the Old English word hāligdæg. The word originally referred only to special religious days. In modern use, it means any special day of rest or relaxation, as opposed to normal days away from work or school.

Regional meaning

The usage of the word holiday varies in different parts of the English-speaking world.

Australia, Canada, UK

In Australia, Canada, and the UK, all usage of the word holiday means time away from normal employment or education. The meaning is further subdivided into two major sub-categories:

1. Public holiday, a day decreed by government as a day when the bulk of the population is not normally expected to be at work, such as Australia Day, Anzac Day, Bank Holiday or Christmas Day.
2. A non-working trip or stay away from one's normal home. This is similar to what is described in American English as a vacation, a word rarely used in Australia or the UK. Canadians variously use either the term vacation or the word holiday.

Days referred to as holidays in other places but which do not involve formally decreed time away from work especially for that day, such as Valentine's Day and Mother's Day, are not described as holidays in Australia or the UK.

The UK and Australia also refer to School holidays (typically Christmas, Easter, and Summer) for the periods between School terms when children are not required to go to school, and Half-term holidays for the short break (usually one week) part-way through each School term.

United States

In the US, holiday may refer to a day set aside by a nation or culture (in some cases, multiple nations and cultures) for commemoration, celebration, or other observance. Schools and businesses often close for certain holidays. The term "holiday" is also commonly used as a direct euphemism for Christmas; businesses may announce, for example, that a product will be available "for Holiday 2012", meaning that it will be available in time for the Christmas shopping season.

India

In India holidays are days in which mainly schools or small firms get a free day.

Types of holiday (observance)

Main article: Lists of holidays

Religious holidays

See also Category: Religious holidays

Many holidays are linked to faiths and religions (see etymology above). Christian holidays are defined as part of the liturgical year, the chief ones being Easter and Christmas. The Orthodox Christian and Western-Roman Catholic patronal feast day or 'name day' are celebrated in each place's patron saint's day, according to the Calendar of saints. In Islam, the largest holidays are Eid ul-Fitr (immediately after Ramadan) and Eid al-Adha (at the end of the Hajj). Hindus, Jains and Sikhs observe several holidays, one of the largest being Diwali (Festival of Light). Japanese holidays contain references to several different faiths and beliefs. Celtic, Norse, and Neopagan holidays follow the order of the Wheel of the Year. Some are closely linked to Swedish festivities. The Bahá'í Faith observes holidays as defined by the Bahá'í calendar. Jews have two holiday seasons: the Spring Feasts of Pesach (Passover) and Shavuot (Weeks, called Pentecost in Greek); and the Fall Feasts of Rosh Hashanah (Head of the Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Sukkot (Tabernacles), and Shemini Atzeret (Eighth Day of Assembly).

Northern Hemisphere winter holidays

Main article: Christmas and holiday season

Winter in the Northern Hemisphere features many holidays that involve festivals and feasts. The Christmas and holiday season surrounds the winter solstice, Christmas and Holiday, and is celebrated by many religions and cultures. Usually, this period begins near the start of November and ends with New Year's Day. Holiday season is, somewhat, a commercial term that applies, in the US, to the period that begins with Thanksgiving and ends with New Year's Eve. Some Christian countries consider the end of the festive season to be after the feast of Epiphany.

National holidays

Main article: National Day

Sovereign nations and territories observe holidays based on events of significance to their history. For example, Americans celebrate Independence Day, celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

Secular holidays

See also Category: Secular holidays

Several secular holidays are observed, such as Earth Day or, Arbor Day, or Labor Day, both internationally, and across multi-country regions, often in conjunction with organizations such as the United Nations. Many other days are marked to celebrate events or people, but are not strictly holidays as time off work is rarely given.

Unofficial holidays

See also Category: Unofficial observances

These are holidays that are not traditionally marked on calendars. These holidays are celebrated by various groups and individuals. Some promote a cause, others recognize historical events not officially recognized, and others are "funny" holidays celebrated with humorous intent. For example, Monkey Day celebrated on December 14, International Talk Like a Pirate Day observed on September 19 and Blasphemy Day is September 30.

Opposition

Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate certain holidays, such as Christmas, Halloween, and Easter, because they believe these holidays are pagan. They do however annually observe "The Passover", paying homage to the death of Jesus Christ, and the sacrifices they believe he made for mankind.^[2]

See also

Holidays portal

• List of holidays by country
• Christmas controversy
• Holiday heart syndrome

Notes

1. ^ Georgetown University Department of Campus Ministry Religious Holy Days 2011
2. ^ Reasoning from the Scriptures. Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. 1985, revised 1989. pp. 176–182. 

References

• Susan E. Richardson (July 2001). Holidays & Holy Days: Origins, Customs, and Insights on Celebrations Through the Year. Vine Books. ISBN 0-8307-3442-2. 
• Lucille Recht Penner and Ib Ohlsson (September 1993). Celebration: The Story of American Holidays. MacMillan Publishing Company. ISBN 0-02-770903-5. 
• Barbara Klebanow and Sara Fischer (2005). American Holidays: Exploring Traditions, Customs, and Backgrounds. Pro Lingua Associates. ISBN 0-86647-196-0. 

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Holiday

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on Holiday Recipes

Look up holiday in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Holidays at the Open Directory Project
• "US & Canadian Holidays from 2010-2015". http://vpcalendar.net/Holiday_Dates/2010_2015.html. 
• "Holidays". http://www.barrheadtravel.co.uk/holidays. 
• "Calendar of all legal Public and Bank Holidays worldwide, until 2070". http://bank-holidays.com/. 
• "Where Holiday Traditions Come From". LIFE. September 10, 2005. http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/53481/where-holiday-traditions-come-from#index/0. 
• Lallanilla, Marc (November 24, 2004). "Holiday Stress Brings Anxiety and Abuse". ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=276559&page=1. 

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Dansk (Danish)
n. - fridag, ferie, helligdag
v. intr. - holde fridag, holde ferie, fejre helligdag

idioms:

• holiday camp    feriekoloni

Nederlands (Dutch)
vakantie, feestdag, heiligedag, vrije dag

Français (French)
n. - (GB) vacances, (GB) congé, jour férié, (US) fêtes (de fin d'année)
v. intr. - passer les vacances

idioms:

• holiday camp    colonie de vacances

Deutsch (German)
n. - Feiertag, freier Tag, Ferien, Urlaub
v. - Urlaub machen

idioms:

• holiday camp    Ferienpark

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (θρησκευτική) εορτή, αργία, (πληθ.) διακοπές (ανάπαυσης)
v. - κάνω διακοπές

idioms:

• holiday camp    κατασκήνωση

Italiano (Italian)
giorno festivo, vacanze

idioms:

• holiday camp    campeggio

Português (Portuguese)
n. - feriado (m), férias (f pl)
v. - gozar ou sair de férias (Brit.)

idioms:

• holiday camp    acampamento (m) de férias

Русский (Russian)
праздник, отпуск, развлечение, праздничный, отпускной, проводить отпуск

idioms:

• holiday camp    база отдыха

Español (Spanish)
n. - día feriado, día de fiesta, vacaciones
v. intr. - pasar las vacaciones en un lugar determinado

idioms:

• holiday camp    colonia veraniega

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - ledig dag, helgdag, semester
v. - semestra

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
假日, 节日, 假期, 外出度假

idioms:

• holiday camp    假日野营地

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 假日, 節日, 假期
v. intr. - 外出度假

idioms:

• holiday camp    假日野營地

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 휴일, 축제일, 휴가
v. intr. - 휴가를 보내다, 휴가를 얻다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 休日, 祝日, 祭日, 休暇
adj. - 休日の
v. - 休暇を過ごす

idioms:

• busman's holiday    平常作業の休日
• holiday camp    行楽地

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) عيد ديني, يوم عطله, بصيغه الجمع عطل (فعل) يقضي العطله‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮יום מנוחה, חג, פגרה‬
v. intr. - ‮בילה חופשה‬

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