Vacation
Historically, the idea of travel for recreation was a luxury that only wealthy people could afford (see Grand Tour).
In the Puritan culture of early America, taking a break from work for reasons other than weekly observance of the Sabbath was frowned upon.
[3] In the United Kingdom, vacation once specifically referred to the long summer break taken by the law courts and then later the term was applied to universities.
[4] Vacation, in English-speaking North America, describes recreational travel, such as a short pleasure trip or a journey abroad.
In the 1800s, New York City industrialists such as the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Huntingtons built their own "great camps" in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York where they could spend time with their families in private luxury, declaring that they would "vacate" their city homes for their lakeside summer retreats; thus the term "vacation" replaced the British "holiday" in common parlance in the United States, with influence from guidebook author William Henry Harrison Murray.
[6] In Hungarian, the word vakáció can mean both a recreational trip, an officially granted absence from work (generally in warmer months), and the summer (longest) school break.
[9] A 2013 literature review on the health and wellness benefits of travel experiences revealed beneficial effects of vacationing.
These effects can be explained by the pleasant expectations, called "Vorfreude" in German, that arise in the time leading up to the Christmas holidays.
[15] In a series of studies from 2010,[16] 2012[17] and 2013,[18] a team of researchers from the Radboud University Nijmegen analyzed the effects of vacations on subjective wellbeing in approximately 250 employees.
However, within the first week of returning to work, employee's wellbeing lapsed to pre-vacation levels, irrespective of the duration or type of vacation.
Researchers examined creativity by way of an idea-generation task (Guilford's Alternate Uses) in 46 Dutch employees before and after a three-week summer vacation.
In a study from 2012,[17] researchers found that a vacation may act as a relationship booster by offering the opportunity to increase interactions with a partner and by enhancing spouse support.
[22] Another team of researchers found that shared experiences during vacations, such as effective communication, showing affection, or experiencing new things together, were positively associated with couples' day-to-day functioning at home.
[23] In 2007, researchers developed four measures for assessing how people recuperate and unwind from work during leisure time.
More than half of all working people in the United States forfeited paid time off at the end of the year.
Recent developments in communication technology—such as internet, mobile, instant messaging, presence tracking—have begun to change the nature of vacation.
Antithetically, workers may take time out of the office to go on vacation, but remain plugged-in to work-related communications networks.
While remaining plugged-in over vacation may generate short-term business benefits, the long-term psychological impacts of these developments are only beginning to be understood.
