Every Gregorian-calendar country marks New Year's Day as a holiday except Israel
People have been celebrating the turn of the year for at least four thousand years, and New Year's Day is now the world's most widespread public holiday. Only one country on the Gregorian calendar leaves it off the list. Meanwhile in Japan, Christmas has come to mean a bucket of fried chicken.
The word itself gives away its origins. Holiday descends from the Old English haligdaeg, holy day, and once described only religious occasions. Today it covers any time set aside for celebration or rest. Governments set public holidays, which differ between states and regions; religious bodies set their own, and in countries where one faith dominates those often become public holidays too.
Meaning depends on which side of the Atlantic you stand. Americans use holiday for days of national, religious or cultural observance, and the holidays for the stretch from Thanksgiving in late November to 1 January. In Britain, Australia and New Zealand, a holiday is also what Americans call a vacation: agreed time away from work or school, for travel or rest, whether or not it coincides with any festival. Holidays can also be thematic, honouring a group, idea or event, or simply days off with no particular meaning.
Many have drifted from their roots. Christmas, spread by Christianity and marked by over 2 billion people, is a public holiday across much of Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australasia, yet 61 percent of Britons celebrate it entirely without religion. Industrial growth has commercialised many other holidays as well. New Year itself is not tied to one calendar: Chinese New Year and Vietnamese Tet follow different reckonings from the Gregorian 31 December and 1 January.
Newer holidays address modern causes. The United Nations keeps a list of International Days and Weeks, and even devotes whole years and decades to themes. International Women's Day on 8 March celebrates women's achievements and presses for equality. Earth Day, observed since 1970, highlights pollution and the climate crisis and drew 10,000 events in 2007. Commemorations of the end of the Second World War or of the Shoah can form part of reparations under a UN General Assembly resolution on victims' rights.
Source: Holiday
