Holiday or holidays fill in the right word

Happy holidays! Or is it holiday?

With season’s greetings being shared so often throughout this time of year, it can be hard to remember whether you should write and say holiday or holidays. You want to spread cheer through every card you send and to every person you pass on the street.

Yet a grammar snafu can really dampen your seasonal spirits.

Spread your holiday cheer over the holidays correctly with confidence by following these simple holiday grammar rules.

Holiday, without an S, is a singular noun that generally refers to a specific celebrated event or day. You say the word holiday because it’s a commonly recognized day of celebration.

Here are some examples:

Because Monday is a public holiday, the library will be closed.

How do you celebrate the holiday season?

Holiday also refers to taking a vacation or a trip away from home, be it during a time of shared celebration or not.

It’s usually phrased like this:

I’ll need a holiday after I finish this presentation for work.

They booked a holiday online to France and Spain next month.

We met Jan and Frank while on holiday last year.

Holidays, with an S, is a plural noun that refers to a specific span of celebrated time that’s often socially recognized. In terms of celebration, the word holidays usually refers to the Christmas season or all the days celebrated during the month of December, but it could also reference the period between academic terms.

Confused yet? Read these examples:

Better save money now for the holidays!

Are you visiting your family over the holidays?

Holidays also can reference taking multiple trips or vacations away from home any time of the year.

Like this:

We spend our holidays every year at our cabin up north.

Sue always joins them on their holidays, no matter where they travel.

Happy Holiday vs Happy Holidays

Happy holidays is both a written and spoken greeting commonly used before or during the holiday season. You use the plural form because you’re wishing happiness upon someone for a span of time instead of on one specific celebrated day.

To put it simply:

Happy holidays!

Happy holiday, although less commonly used, can be used not as a greeting but in a sentence where you want to wish happiness upon someone on a specific celebrated day.

Here’s how you can use the phrase correctly:

I hope you have a happy holiday!

When Do You Capitalize Holiday or Holidays?

The words holiday and holidays do not reference a specific day of celebration like the words Christmas or Thanksgiving or Halloween. Therefore, you do not capitalize holiday or holidays, even when paired in a sentence with a specific holiday.

These examples illustrate my point:

We traveled to Memphis for the Christmas holidays.

Happy holidays to you and your family!

There is an exception. You’ll often find the phrase Happy Holidays capitalized as a standalone phrase on seasonal cards because it then follows the rules of capitalization for titles or headers.

How do you remember when to say or write holiday or holidays? Share your tips in the comments section below.

This can depend on how you define singular and plural in this context.

There are many English people who say I’m going on me ‘olidays, and it is common enough in my view to be recognised as idiomatic. It invariably refers to a person’s annual custom of going away on holiday. At one time the only ‘holiday’ that ordinary people had were days such as Christmas, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Whit Monday etc. These were Holy Days — holidays.

When workers won the right to annual leave entitlement, they began talking about their ‘holidays’ since there was more than one day of holiday involved. So they began going ‘on their holidays’. (I have not checked this with the OED but I feel sure this is the origin of this plural use.)

One senses that the plural form has been in decline for many years, and you were less likely, anyway, to hear this form among the well-spoken middle-classes, who pronounce ‘oliday’ with an H. They will say ‘I’m going on holiday’.

I might be over-generalizing here, but I would say that ‘holidays’ usually refers to a period of time when the school/college/business/factory etc is closed, hence ‘the summer holidays’, ‘the Easter holidays’ and ‘the Christmas holidays’:
-I can’t wait for the summer holidays. Six whole weeks of rest and relaxation!

It is when we refer to our own plans that it becomes ‘holiday’:
—I am going on holiday for two whole weeks.

For that reason, you might get both versions within one sentence:
-The summer holidays begin next week, but I am not going on (my) holiday until the end of July.
—The holidays were great, especially the last week when I went on holiday to Spain.
—We always try not to go on holiday during the school holidays.

Again at risk of over-generalizing, I would say that we would not normally use a posessive with the plural form — we say ‘the holidays’. However, with the singular form it is ok to say ‘my holiday’.

Hence, in your two sentences above, I would change the second one. But be aware that they convey (to me, anyway) different ideas:

1 — I will spend my summer holiday in Cornwall.
2 — I will spend the summer holidays in Cornwall. (To me, this one implies that if the school/university holidays last for two months, I am going to spend those two months in Cornwall!)