Holidays are for everyone
One big difference between
"vacation" and "holiday" is that we use the word 'holiday'
to talk about days that are celebrated by a lot of people. They include religious
holidays:
·
Christmas
·
Rosh Hashanah
·
Ramadan
They also include national
holidays. An example of a national holiday for the United States is
Independence Day.
If everyone that you work with
is out of work on the same day, it's not a "vacation".
Vacations often involve travel
If you tell someone about your
"vacation" the conversation might go like this:
You: I took a
vacation last week.
Them: Where did
you go?
That's because vacations often
involve traveling somewhere.
A new word that's become a bit
popular in the last 10 years is "staycation". A
"staycation" is a holiday that you spend at home.
British and other English varieties
The rules above are for
American English. British English uses "holiday" in both cases:
Monday is a
holiday.
I'm going on
holiday next week.
What about other days?
There are some days when you
don't work that are neither "holidays" nor "vacations". For
example, if you stay home one day just to relax, what do you call it? It's not
a general "holiday" but you're not going anywhere so it's not a
"vacation" either. You can call such a situation a "day
off":
I'm going to
take a day off this week.
A lot of people don't work on
weekends (Saturday and Sunday). To talk about those days, just call them
"the weekend":
I can't wait for
the weekend!
But if you have a job that
requires you to work on weekends, you still have days each week when you don't
work. Call those your "days off":
What are you
doing on your day off?
If you're in school, you also
have weeks or months when there are no classes. Those are called
"breaks":
What did you do
over summer break?