Saturday - Activities

Activities

• Saturday is a weekend day in most countries (see Workweek).
• In Nepal Saturday is last day of the week and is the only official weekly holiday.
• Saturday is the official day of rest in Israel, on which all government offices and most businesses, including some public transportation, are closed.
• Saturday is the usual day for elections in Australia, the only day on which elections can be held in New Zealand, and the preferred election day in the U.S. state of Louisiana.
• Saturday morning is a notable television time block aimed at children while generally airing animated cartoons.
• It is common for clubs, bars and restaurants to be open later on Saturday night than on other nights. Thus "Saturday Night" has come to imply the party scene, and has lent its name to the films Saturday Night Fever, which showcased New York discotheques, Uptown Saturday Night, as well as many songs (see below).
• Saturday night is also a popular time slot for comedy shows on television. The most famous of these is Saturday Night Live, a skit show that has aired on NBC nearly every week since 1975. Other notable examples include Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. This practice lent its name to the film Mr. Saturday Night, starring Billy Crystal.
• In folklore, Saturday was the preferred day to hunt vampires, because on that day they were restricted to their coffins. It was also believed in the Balkans that someone born on Saturday could see a vampire when it was otherwise invisible, and that such people were particularly apt to become vampire hunters. Accordingly, in this context, people born on Saturday were specially designated as sabbatianoí in Greek and sâbotnichavi in Bulgarian; the term has been rendered in English as "Sabbatarians".
• The amount of criminal activities that take place on Saturday nights has led to the expression, "Saturday night special" a pejorative slang term used in the United States and Canada for any inexpensive handgun.
• In Sweden, Saturday is usually the only day of the week when children are allowed to eat sweets, lördagsgodis. Lördag derives from lögardag; old word löga meaning to wash/clean. This tradition was introduced in the 1960s to limit dental caries, utilizing the results of the infamous Vipeholm experiments. See festivities in Sweden.