These words all refer to those glorious days during the week when you don’t have to work.  We all love them, but each of these words has a slightly different meaning, so, to make sure everything is clear, we need to use them properly:

•  A holiday is a day when you get time off in order to celebrate a special (usually historical or religious) event.  Examples include Christmas Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, any saint’s day, etc.

• Derived from this, the term “the holidays” or “the holiday season” is used to refer to the time from mid-December to early January, when many holidays occur in succession (Christmas, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, Epiphany, Festivus, etc.).  This term is also sometimes used to avoid making any direct reference to any specific religion’s holiday.

• To refer to the long period of time (usually a week or more) when you don’t have to work, and therefore can travel to islands or go sightseeing around the world, is called holiday(s) in British English and vacation in American.  Some examples:

I’m going on holiday/vacation to Australia and New Zealand this August.
I spent my holidays/vacation on the Canary Islands in pure luxury.
Your holidays/vacation should be a time of relaxation, free from stress.

• Notice how the British expression “on holiday” is in the singular, while other uses are in the plural.  The US English “vacation” is always in the singular.

• The word vacations isn’t used.

• While shorter periods of time (less than a week) can be referred to as a vacation or holidays, oftentimes they are simply called “days off” or “free days”.

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