A holiday is a day set aside by custom or by law on which normal activities, especially business or work, are suspended or reduced. Generally, holidays are intended to allow individuals to celebrate or commemorate an event or tradition of cultural or religious significance. Holidays may be designated by governments, religious institutions, or other groups or organizations. The degree to which normal activities are reduced by a holiday may depend on local laws, customs, the type of job being held or even personal choices.
The concept of holidays has most often originated in connection with religious observances. The intention of a holiday was typically to allow individuals to tend to religious duties associated with important dates on the calendar. In most modern societies, however, holidays serve as much of a recreational function as any other weekend days or activities.
In many societies there are important distinctions between holidays designated by governments and holidays designated by religious institutions. For example, in many predominantly Christian nations, government-designed holidays may center on Christian holidays, though non-Christians may instead observe religious holidays associated with their faith. In some cases, a holiday may only be nominally observed. For example, many Jews in the Americas and Europe treat the relatively minor Jewish holiday of Hanukkah as a "working holiday", changing very little of their daily routines for this day.
Holidays is 2010 Malayalam film directed by M M Ramachandran (Atlas Ramachandran), starring Vinu Mohan, Ranjith Menon, Muktha and Priya Lal in the lead roles. The film is about a few IT professionals, who arrive at Kochi and get entangled in a web of problems.
The story involves a bunch of youngsters Alby (Vinu Mohan), Janet (Muktha), Riya (Priya Lal),Soumitran (Renjith),Sudhi (Sudheesh) and a few others who are planning the elopment of Sudhi and his lover, since Sudhi's lover is about to get engaged to Vinod (Kalabhavan Mani) who is also a tough cop. On the way they rescue a pretty young girl by the name of Lekha (Sruthi Lakshmi) from the hands of a few ruffians, but later find the girl murdered. They flee to a tea estate in Munnar, but the murderer is close at hand.
A woman is a female human. The term woman is usually reserved for an adult, with the term girl being the usual term for a female child or adolescent. The term woman is also sometimes used to identify a female human, regardless of age, as in phrases such as "women's rights". "Woman" may also refer to a person's gender identity. Women with typical genetic development are usually capable of giving birth from puberty until menopause. In the context of gender identity, transgender people who are biologically determined to be male and identify as women cannot give birth. Some intersex people who identify as women cannot give birth due to either sterility or inheriting one or more Y chromosomes. In extremely rare cases, people who have Swyer syndrome can give birth with medical assistance. Throughout history women have assumed or been assigned various social roles.
The spelling of woman in English has progressed over the past millennium from wīfmann to wīmmann to wumman, and finally, the modern spelling woman. In Old English, wīfmann meant "female human", whereas wēr meant "male human". Mann or monn had a gender-neutral meaning of "human", corresponding to Modern English "person" or "someone"; however, subsequent to the Norman Conquest, man began to be used more in reference to "male human", and by the late 13th century had begun to eclipse usage of the older term wēr. The medial labial consonants f and m in wīfmann coalesced into the modern form "woman", while the initial element, which meant "female", underwent semantic narrowing to the sense of a married woman ("wife"). It is a popular misconception that the term "woman" is etymologically connected with "womb", which is from a separate Old English word, wambe meaning "stomach" (of male or female; modern German retains the colloquial term "Wampe" from Middle High German for "potbelly"). Nevertheless, such a false derivation of "woman" has appeared in print.
Women is a 1978 novel written by Charles Bukowski, starring his semi-autobiographical character Henry Chinaski. In contrast to Factotum, Post Office and Ham on Rye, Women is centered on Chinaski's later life, as a celebrated poet and writer, not as a dead-end lowlife. It does, however, feature the same constant carousel of women with whom Chinaski only finds temporary fulfillment.
Women focuses on the many dissatisfactions Chinaski faced with each new woman he encountered. One of the women featured in the book is a character named Lydia Vance; she is based on Bukowski's one-time girlfriend, the sculptress and sometime poet Linda King. Another central female character in the book is named "Tanya" who is described as a 'tiny girl-child' and Chinaski's pen-pal. They have a weekend tryst. The real-life counterpart to this character wrote a self-published chapbook about the affair entitled "Blowing My Hero" under the pseudonym Amber O'Neil. The washed-up folksinger "Dinky Summers" is based on Bob Lind.
Women is the debut album by Calgary band Women, recorded by fellow Calgary-native Chad VanGaalen. It was released in 2008 on VanGaalen's Flemish Eye record label in Canada, and on Jagjaguwar in the US. The song "Sag Harbour Song" is a direct reference to the suicide of the artist Ray Johnson, like "Locust Valley" and "Venice Lockjaw" on Women's second album of 2010, Public Strain.
Women was recorded by Polaris Music Prize-nominated Chad VanGaalen, in "[VanGaalen's] basement, an outdoor culvert and a crawlspace." It was recorded using boom boxes and tape machines, contributing to its lo-fi sound.
Women was released to favourable reviews, with Cokemachineglow naming it as "the best 'indie rock' record released [in 2008], hands down."