Half term didn't used to exist did it?

[EthicalNonMahogany]

I feel gaslit by the world! The number of people who are saying to me "oh, at school we always used to call the Easter, Christmas and summer break half term". No you didn't! You used to call it the Easter holidays. It was the holiday that happens at the end of term.

"Half term" used to happen three times a year and was the week off, half way through each term.

I know there have been threads on this before - I'm not disputing that many people now call all the holidays half term. It seems to be the thing now. (Stupid and inaccurate as it may be, but I shall endeavour to cope and life will go on )

My AIBU is this - people are saying it was always that way. AIBU to say no it bloody wasn't!!

I started school in 1959.there was always half term although where I lived it was just the Friday and Monday round the weekend and we had 7 weeks summer holiday. Baker days were days holiday that teachers lost in a pay deal in 1985 nothing to do with half term. They are used for teacher training but used yp be called occasional days and could be any days the school decuded. Children have always had the same number of days holiday.

I suppose all the holidays are half term, you have half a term at school then a holiday!

While we're on the subject, my recently departed Nan (94) used to call one of the half terms "potato picking week". Any idea which one this would have been? I just can't remember but I'd love to know.

October. North of Fife in Scotland they are the tattie holidays.

I suppose all the holidays are half term, you have half a term at school then a holiday!

No. Each half term of school is a half term, because it's...half a term. Each holiday is either at the end of a term or half-way through a term. The ones that are half-way through the term are called half term holidays!

@shinynewapple22 that could well have been it! Thank you.

My father works in the car industry

We never had Feb or May half terms, just tattie picking start of October. Scotland in the 60s.

Easter, summer, Christmas were just "the holidays", you never looked beyond the next one, because you never needed to book a year in advance for anything.

Adding to the voices from Scotland.

We have four terms, each with a holiday period. Christmas holidays (two weeks Dec/Jan), Easter holidays (two weeks April), Summer holidays (typically start the end of June until mid August, so 6-7 weeks), Tattie holidays (two weeks at end of September/start of October).

There are random in service days and long weekends throughout the terms - few days in February, a couple of long weekends in May, day or two in November)

Some of our schools have started calling these "half term" over the past few years, but they were never called that until recently.

This is currently driving me mad - I get that half term heroes is alliterative, but it's WRONG!!! www.grandarcade.co.uk/events/superheroes/

Half term was a week in the middle of term. Easter, Christmas and Summer Holidays aren't half terms, they end each term! When did this change? I'm starting to feel old...

Bollocks. The dates are different in different areas anyway. You'd have to be monumentally thick to not realise that and say Easter holiday. Easter holiday doesn't just apply to schools 🤣

Nonsense. The fact that different areas have different school holiday dates is utterly irrelevant to the fact that when people say 'the Easter holidays' they invariably mean the school Easter holidays (whatever date they are, and whether they even have children or not, because they'll all have gone to school at some point, and that's what it's called!).

Easter weekend isn't 'the holidays' and you know it!

Bollocks. The dates are different in different areas anyway. You'd have to be monumentally thick to not realise that and say Easter holiday. Easter holiday doesn't just apply to schools 🤣

No I know that which is why I don’t book important meetings for the three weeks around Easter without checking people’s actual availability.

‘Easter holiday’ isn’t a thing. Easter weekend is the correct term.

Easter holidays is used in relation to schools and educational settings.

Cross-posted. Yup, exactly.

I had to book a meeting outside the Easter holiday. It had to be outside the Easter holiday because of childcare commitments. I booked it for last week, the Easter holiday is next weekend. Some people are pissed off as they're now having to pay for extra childcare, they meant the school Easter holidays (which makes no sense whatsoever as different areas have different dates). I'm not rearranging as they fucked up by not being clear. If they'd said "half term" instead of Easter Holidays, there wouldn't have been an issue and I would have double checked dates. I took it to mean the actual Easter holiday.

So when you say 'Easter holidays' do you literally just mean the bank holidays - good Friday and Easter Monday?

Whilst I'm being a mardy cow on this thread, I honestly think it's because people are thick, or lazy, or both.

Nothing to do with diversity etc.

Right, I'll go away now!

I wouldn't call October half term either. Half term is the May and February weeks if you get them - not everywhere does.

@dementedpixie

I'm in Scotland and don't think I've ever called any holidays a half term holiday. Easter holidays Christmas holidays, October week, September weekend, etc. Then various long weekends or random in service days

I'm in Scotland too. We call our February break half term as we get a full week

I’ve never heard them referred to that way. October half term, Feb half term and I’ve always called the May half term whitsun (though my OH who grew up in the same village as me has never heard this saying and doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I say it )

I heard this for the first time yesterday! Very strange. Half term is halfway through the term, not at the end of it!

This is actually one of my historical interests and before everything was standardised (so 19th century), schools setting holidays tended to have breaks at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, with a long Harvest holiday that varied in length and timing depending on the area and what was being harvested! After 1862 they had to have a certain number of school days every year to qualify for state funding (measured in half-days, because children working in factories had half-time education, which is the origin of morning and afternoon registration records) but when in the year those days fell was up to the school.

I’ve never noticed anyone calling it half term! The half term holidays are the ones half way through the term. Easter, Christmas and Summer holidays are the end of a full term and are longer. No idea where the confusion has come from.

@Fairislefandango I’ve already said it annoys me but I think the PP is right.
Half term in that you’ve done half a term and then you get a holiday.

Rather than thinking about it as a split of the 3 Autumn, Spring and Summer terms.

The school I am working at is calling the Easter holiday half term. It's completely confusing.

In Kent they have 6 terms - the holiday patterns are exactly the same as everywhere else but instead of having 3 terms each chopped in half, they just call them terms 1-6. So all the breaks are just called holidays. Weird.

When I was at school (I left school in 1972 - I am cracking on a bit) we never had the luxury of a weeks half term. It was usually a couple of days tagged on to a weekend, sometimes only one day, so it was, at best, just a long weekend. Families would never have sufficient time to go on holiday, say. (But then, holidays in employment were a lot shorter too, so you were lucky to get a weeks family holiday during the long summer hols). I think children generally spend far less time at school now than they did in the past - even the school day was longer than now.

My mum used to call one of the half terms (think it was after the summer hols) ‘blackberry week’. Anyone else heard that term, or did she invent that all by herself?!

Can't have been the end of October, because if you pick them after old Michael as (11th October), that's when the devil spits on them. Otherwise, it would be the most logical one.

Who are all these people calling the Easter hols half term? I don't think I've noticed it (and I'm a teacher with kids at school, so if it was common you'd think I would have), but they're just wrong.