Long weekend
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A long weekend is a term used in Western countries to denote a weekend that is at least three days long (a three-day weekend), due to a holiday falling on either the Friday or Monday. In the United Kingdom these would be termed a bank holiday weekend.
In some cases there may also be a four-day weekend in which two days adjoining the weekend are holidays—either Thursday and Friday, Friday and Monday, or Monday and Tuesday. This occurs once a year where the Easter weekend is celebrated, with Easter Monday and Good Friday. Countries that celebrate both Christmas Day and Boxing Day can also have a four-day weekend when these adjacent holidays fall on Thursday/Friday or Monday/Tuesday. Additionally, in places where a lone holiday occurs on a Tuesday or a Thursday, the gap between that day and the weekend may also be designated as a holiday, or set to be a movable or floating holiday.
On Thanksgiving in the United States, Thursday is the traditional day of feasting, but the following Friday is also usually a non-working day, in addition to the weekend.
[edit] Other cultures
The term for a four-day weekend in Spanish-speaking countries is puente ("bridge").
In Spain, the "bridge" becomes an "aqueduct" in some years when the anniversary of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 (6 December) and the Blessed Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception (8 December) and a weekend plus a movable holiday form a block of five days.
French-speaking cultures use the same "bridge" idiom: faire le pont meaning "to take a long weekend". The Italians do the same with the cognate word ponte.
In German, a bridge-related term is also used: a holiday taken to fill the gap between a holiday Thursday and the weekend is called a Brückentag ("bridge day") in Germany and Switzerland, and a Fenstertag ("window day") in Austria. "bridge day" is also used in Israel ("yom gishur"/"יום גישור") and The Netherlands ("brugdag").
The term długi weekend (Polish for long weekend) is also commonly used in the Polish language. In Poland, such a phenomenon usually occurs several times a year.
In Norwegian, the term "oval weekend" is used. An ordinary weekend is conceived of as "round" (although this is not stated explicitly), and adding extra days off makes it "oval".
