To think a UK holiday is still a proper holiday?

[Driedpotatochip]

I’m going to Argentina next week and a friend commented that it’s been ages since I had a proper holiday post covid.

I’ve managed to do long weekends away and a week away twice in the UK and also went to Spain for a long weekend from 2020 to now.

True I haven’t been to a destination that’s really far away since 2019 but I feel like i still had proper holidays. Aibu or does what I did not count as a holiday?

I don’t believe you can say you’re having a holiday if you are living in the house you live in all the time, and sleeping in the same bed as always.
Day trips are not holidays!

A holiday to me is going abroad. A week or so in the UK is just a break away to me.

I think it is currently a form of snobbery in sense shows a belief that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people ie it's dismissing UK holiday as lesser not as good rather than just different.

I only had UK holidays as a kid and my own children have only so far had UK holidays - though they've been abroad with school or will do next year which my own parents couldn't afford to facilitate.

As a child we some years had to have staycations - ie days out in local area instead but covid has lead to an incorrect alternative usage of this word as UK holiday.

I know IL very working class frequently boast of their holidays abroad it is very much seen as a thing to aspire to even now when it's much more common- but even there they still call there UK breaks a holiday.

Whether longer term a language change is happening maybe - language change come from bottom up and many more people now do holidays aboard as a matter of course - and an substantial section of the UK population do seem to see UK holidays as lesser in response - though I really hope staycation doesn't stick for UK holidays.

That would be classed as a staycation wouldn’t it?

One of my pet hates is calling a UK holiday a 'staycation'. A staycation is staying at home and doing day trips. A week in Bournemouth when you live elsewhere is a holiday, the same as if you went to benidorm for a week.

I absolutely agree with this. I don't have such an issue if people have 'rules' for themselves as to what is or isn't a holiday in their eyes - the same as some people don't consider any number of non-alcoholic beverages 'a drink'; and some will believe they haven't had 'a proper party' if they're able to drive home safely at the end rather than staggering around bowfing and wetting themselves - but I strongly object to people trying to arbitrarily changing a longstanding dictionary definition for other people's choices, just because they aren't the choices that they would make.

This reminds me of the other thread about vegetarianism - with some people cheerfully saying that a vegetarian can eat fish, chicken, whatever - in fact, it seems like, meat-eaters (like me) can eat a bit less meat than average and still effectively be described as a vegetarian!

For many of us, a UK holiday is actually our preference, and not just a little consolation prize because we can't afford to go to Greece. We stay in the UK, as it seems such a shame to us to go to far-flung places when there are so many lovely places in our own country, and so little holiday time available.

Plus, we have certain health issues which mean that travel insurance would be very expensive and/or not pay out anyway, so what's the point in risking that when our preferred holidays also come with free access to the NHS?

Apart from anything else, many of these holidays abroad seem to be designed to be effectively 'the UK but hotter'. Somebody from Kent could hop over to a place on the continent that's full of Brits, British food, everybody speaks English, everything is catered to Brits - and that is (to many) a 'proper' holiday; but if they travelled up to Orkney, to discover all the amazing Orcadian history, culture and very different geography - that is not a holiday?!

Not snobbish to prefer your own kind of holiday at all; extremely snobbish (and ironically rather insular) to sneer at other people's holidays that they aren't 'really' holidays.

So if a 'proper' holiday is going somewhere different...
I'm looking out of my window and can see the other side if my row of terraces with a street full of cars

On our not proper holiday in the Isle of Wight I opened the door to the sea across the road, I went to sleep with the sound of waves, not the noise of the city. I didn't cook for a week or do any washing up. We had great weather and a lovely time.
On our second not proper holiday we opened the door to the Welsh mountains, with the sea a 10 minute walk down the lane. We had good weather and a lovely relaxing week, broken up by visits to castles and a helicopter flight for my son's 18th birthday.
Of course they were proper holidays. Doing pretty much the same next year.

UK breaks are fantastic holidays. Last night I strolled along the beach in a light jacket watching fireworks and cruise ships go by. It was blissful, beautiful and just lovely(not on holiday though, I just live in a tourist spot). How anyone could think the UK isn't a proper holiday destination is beyond me.

A holiday can be anywhere, a relatives house, camping, etc. it's the break from the norm that matters. Two years running we went to Scotland, definitely a holiday. This year I've been abroad twice, I'm fortunate, but it's not more of a holiday, just more expensive (and actually more hassle)

On our holiday we looked straight onto a field of cows with the sea beyond it. We loved watching the cows moving around in their herd, and spotting ships on the horizon. Very different from home, where we live in an urban area many miles from the nearest coast.

@PinkiOcelot No, a staycation to me is holidaying in the country you live in.

Staying at home when you have time off, and say doing day trips, having nicer food/takeaway going out to a theme park for the day or the cinema is simply just enjoying your leisure time, just like you would on any given weekend.

I am sitting in a caravan in the uk. It is grey and damp out and I am drinking filter coffee and cuddling the dog. I am very much on holiday. I feel totally relaxed. I often don’t feel like this at home as I always feel like I should be doing something. After lunch we are off for a beach walk. Hopefully there will be hardly any people. Bliss.

Maybe they can't afford it? Bit naive to assume everyone can afford to go away once a year.

YABU. I don’t think a UK holiday is the same thing so not I wouldn’t count it as a “proper holiday”.

We go to loads of different places abroad in the autumn/winter/spring and go camping in the UK in the summer. Usually only one county away.

I enjoy our camping holidays as much if not more than our foreign holidays and definitely count them as a holiday!

it's the break from the norm that matters.

I agree. I am always doubtful when people claim that their very young kids want to go back to Spain every year. I believe that under tens will always prefer a UK seaside/glamping/CentreParcs holiday, not airports, planes, arduous packing requirements, jet lag, delays as would their parents.

I confess that I do think of a UK holiday as not a 'proper' holiday. But during covid we only did UK breaks and I have a new appreciation for them.

The ones whom I know can afford it. however, their lives are generally too fraught to devote the time to planning it and the motivation is also lacking. So there are reasons why it does not happen but not financial ones.

I understand staycation to be holidaying in the country that you live in. Most people I know use it to mean that!

So would you really consider an American living in Montana who went to Hawaii for two weeks not to be having an actual holiday?

Should Brits who go to New Zealand for their holidays every year not really consider those who 'only' go to New York or Morocco to be going on a 'proper' holiday? It's absurd.

The big clue is in 'stay' - meaning stay at home whilst you go on daytrips or even just within your own home/garden, but putting work and school aside and doing holiday-style activities.

It's not called a 'traveluptoacertaindistancecation'. You might just as well say that going to eat in a fancy posh restaurant can only be considered 'popping out for a sandwich' if it happens to be only a couple of miles from your home rather than a 'proper restaurant' that's at the other end of the country (even if it only does fast food anyway).

@Croque Completely agree with you here. In my experience abroad holidays are wasted on very young children.

So when we lived abroad, we used to come back to the UK on trips. A week of that would be camping, with niece ad well as our DDs, and grandparents in a B&B nearby. Similarly, people would visit us.

By some peoples definition, half of us would be on holiday, and half not, even if we were all away from our homes somewhere new....

Or when DH &I would go and spend a weekend in an AI hotel in the tourist resort... not on holiday as only 30mins from home?

@Scarlettpixie

Sounds lovely- enjoy your day

It's twenty years since I last went abroad. I go out of season to various lovely cottages and can take my dogs. More of a holiday than hours in an airport.

You can go to somewhere different, and remain in the UK. It's still a proper holiday.

I think you're confused...you fly, leave the airport, and THEN you're on holiday. HTH.

No - vacation is more US term (and they tend much more to stay in their own vast country than do trips aboard so wouldn't really make sense to have to be just their own country holiday term which also due to limited holiday allowances tend to be rarer events at least for larger sections of population) - anyway and staycation used to mean sleeping in own bed but doing day trips.

www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/staycation-date-meaning
These suggest it goes back as far as 1944.

Unfortunately a lot of media people during covid started using staycation to mean UK holiday - as UK holidays weren't really something that group did as such.

It also meant the existing term was suddenly very much more in use and had a slight change in meaning - this usage started to be picked up by wider population.

So now the definition in many on-line and even dictionaries reflect that change of usage - as people copied media - some times they give two definitions but increasingly they just merge the two slightly different definitions.