A bank holiday is a public holiday in the United Kingdom or other commonwealth countries, or a colloquialism for public holiday in Ireland. There is no automatic right to time off on these days, although banks close and the majority of the population is granted time off work or extra pay for working on these days, depending on their contract. The first official bank holidays were the four days named in the Bank Holidays Act 1871, but today the term is colloquially (albeit incorrectly) used for public holidays which are not officially bank holidays, for example Good Friday and Christmas Day. Many large shops open on bank holidays, when most people have a day off for shopping, heavily advertising sales and bargains.
Read more about Bank Holiday: History, List of Current Holidays
Famous quotes containing the words bank and/or holiday:
“People get a bad impression of it by continually trying to treat it as if it was a bank clerk, who ought to be on time on Tuesday next, instead of philosophically seeing it as a painter, who may do anything so long as you don’t try to predict what.”
—Katharine Whitehorn (b. 1926)
“A holiday is when you celebrate something that’s all finished up, that happened a long time ago and now there’s nothing left to celebrate but the dead.”
—Abraham Polonsky (b. 1910)