Enjoy holiday

In many societies there are important distinctions between holidays designated by governments and holidays designated by religious institutions. For example, in many predominantly Christian nations, government-designed holidays may center around Christian holidays, though non-Christians may instead observe religious holidays associated with their faith. In some cases, a holiday may only be nominally observed. For example, many Jews in the Americas and Europe treat the relatively minor Jewish holiday of Hanukkah as a working holiday, changing very little of their daily routines for this day.

The word holiday has some variance in meaning across different locales. In North America the word refers to widely observed days of rest and recreation, whereas in the U.K. and many Commonwealth nations the word refers to any extended period of recreation. It is this first, more restricted sense of the word that concerns this article.