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Holiday

A holiday is day set aside by a nation or culture (in some cases, multiple nations and cultures) typically for celebration but sometimes for some other kind of special culture-wide (or national) observation or activity.

A public holiday or legal holiday is a holiday endorsed by the state. Public holidays can be either religious, in which case they reflect the dominant religion in a country, or secular, in which case they are usually political or historical in character.

Based on the English words "holy" and "day," holidays originally represented special days of the Christian church calendar. The word has evolved in general usage to mean any special day, or even non-special day on which school or offices are closed such as Sunday.

Consecutive holidays are a string of holidays taken together without working days in between. They tend to be considered a good chance to take short trips, for example. In late 1990s, the Japanese government passed a law that increases the likehood of consecutive holidays by moving holidays fixed on certain day to a relative position in a month such as the second Monday. A well-known consecutive holiday in Japan is golden-week, roughly lasting a whole week.

In late 20-century, Saturday has become increasingly considered holiday as well as Sunday.

For farm holiday, see Agriturismo.

In the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, a holiday is also a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation (e.g., "I'm going on holiday to Majorca next week"), like an American "vacation".

Table of contents
1 Religious holidays
2 National holidays
3 Other holidays
4 External links

Religious holidays

Jewish holidays

Main article: Jewish holidays
  • Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)
  • Passover
  • Rosh Hashanah (Spiritual New Year)
  • Purim (Based on the events in the Biblical book of Esther)
  • Sukkot (The Feast of Tabernacles)
  • Hannukah (also: Chanukah; the Feast of Lights)
  • Tu B'shevat (New year of the trees)
  • Purim
  • Yom HaShoah (Holocaust remembrance day)
  • Yom Ha'atzma'ut (Israel independence day)
  • Shavuot (The Feast of Weeks)
  • Tisha B'Av

Christian holidays

Islamic/Muslim holidays

  • Ramadan
  • Eid: date determined by the lunar calendar and observation of the moon
    • Eid al Fitr, Lesser Bairam
    • Eid al Adha, Greater Bairam

Hindu holidays

National holidays

See Holidays in Sweden

See Holidays in Germany

Other holidays

External links





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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Holiday".