La fête est ce moment privilégié, toujours attendu avec impatience, qui se trouve moins à l'intérieur du temps social qu'à ses marges. Soustraite au temps de la production, elle aura lieu la nuit ou bien à ces dates du calendrier qui, marquant la jonction de deux périodes bien déterminées, n'appartiennent en propre à aucune. Aussi est-elle propice à la mise en relation de ce qu'il faut ordinairement séparer: les classes sociales, les sexes, les âges, voire les vivants et les morts, l'humain et le divin, le social et la nature. Seulement, il y a finalement là moins confrontation, rencontre, dialogue, que dissolution provisoire. L'individu lui-même, libéré de son rôle social, est davantage sommé de s'étourdir et de se fondre dans l'indivis que de s'exprimer. Au verbe se substitue la frénésie, la jouissance, le vertige. Oscillant entre le rituel et l'anarchie, la fête n'annonce pas un ordre nouveau, elle n'est pas la révolution. Elle est plutôt une parenthèse à l'intérieur de l'existence sociale et du règne de la nécessité. Elle est aussi ce qui peut conférer une raison d'être à la quotidienneté, d'où la tentation de multiplier les occasions de fêtes, au point, note Jean Duvignaud, que «certaines nations, certaines cultures se sont englouties dans la fête». Jean Duvignaud, Le don du rien. Essai d’anthropologie de la fête, Stock, 1977 Most countries around the world have labor laws mandating employers give a certain number of paid days of time off per year to be given to a worker. In nearly all Canadian provinces, the legal minimum is three weeks, while in most of Europe the limit is significantly higher. The U.S.[1] does not require employers to give a set mandatory vacation time. However, in the free-market labor system in the United States, many employers offer paid vacation, typically 10 to 20 days work days, as an incentive to attract employees, and under U.S. federal law, an employee whose employment terminates generally must receive compensation for any accrued but unused vacation time. Additionally, the vast majority of American employers provide for paid national holidays, such as Christmas, New Years, Independence Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving Day. While U.S. federal law and most state's laws provide for leave, such as medical leave, there are movements attempting to remove vacation time as a factor in the free-market labor pool and, instead, require mandatory vacation time for American workers, such as timeday.org. In some cases "vacation holiday" is used in North America, which signifies that a vacation trip is taken during a traditional national holiday period, extended on either end of the period by taking additional time off from work. This is common in the United States where employers give far fewer annual vacation days than European employers—so stretching the related national holidays tends to conserve one's accumulated total of eligible days available for longer quality vacation excursions. This is often termed a "long weekend", if a national holiday falls next to a weekend. When national holidays fall on a normal non-working day, such as a weekend, they will sometimes be carried over to the next working day. In the United Kingdom, there is an annual issue for parents, who only have the mandated summer holidays in order to plan vacations. Accordingly, holiday companies charge higher prices, giving an incentive for parents to use their work vacation time in term time.