Holidays refers to a day on which a festival, religious event, or national celebration is traditionally observed. It commonly describes a day declared free from work by the state or government, a period of one or more days taken off work for leisure and often travel; often plural, and a period during which pupils do not attend their school; often plural; rarely used for students at university (usually: vacation), which gives the term a broader and more practical sense than a single short definition would suggest. Depending on context, it can also point to a period during which, by agreement, the usual payments are not made, a gap in coverage, e.g. of paint on a surface, or sonar imagery, and the season around Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year's Day, so the category can cover literal uses, related ideas, and more figurative extensions of the same core meaning. Taken together, these meanings present Holidays as a flexible theme rather than a narrowly technical label, covering the central idea people usually mean when they use the word while still leaving room for closely related senses that appear in real language. Additional shades of meaning include to take a period of time away from work or study and to spend a period of time for travel, which reinforce how the category can stretch across adjacent but still recognizable uses of the same term.
