Holidays or Public Holidays? In Greece and Corfu

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Last updated on July 27th, 2024 at 02:00 pm

What does the word holidays mean? [Public Holidays]

The word Holidays is translated as “Διακοπές” [Diakopes] in Greek but has a completely different meaning than in the English speaking countries, where the word holidays means public holidays.

In Greece, holidays(Diakopes) mean almost exclusively (with few exceptions of course) the days that people spend on a tourist resort during their Summer Holidays.
It has exactly the meaning of the English word “Vacations”

For the days when public services or shops are closed for religious or other reasons, and in general, nothing works, we use the word “Argies” [Αργίες] which can be translated as “public holidays” in English.

So when someone wants to write an article about holidays in Corfu and is addressed to an English-speaking audience, it’s a little hard to figure out what exactly to include in this article.

Trapped mostly by the Greek meaning of the word we write only for the holiday days that someone will spend mostly in the summer on a sunny island.

So we refer to hotels, and sights and describe activities that tourists may have when staying in Corfu.

We ignore even for informative reasons the official public holidays for each place and in our case the “Argies” and semi-holidays that exist in Corfu and the Greek territory.

So on this page, we will mention the official or informal days of public holidays(argies, days off), the days when few people are working, and there are quite many in Greece and especially in Corfu.

If one of these argies happens to be on a Friday, it can be combined with the public semi-holiday of Saturday and Sunday and converted into a short 3-day vacation in a preferably nearby resort.

Public Holiday Days in Corfu and Greece

Holidays for the public sector.

Semiholidays

The days when public services are running only for a few hours

The aforementioned holidays are compulsory for the public sector and not necessarily for all, the mandatory holidays for all are 6, the following below.

Compulsory Holidays

There are also holidays due to a custom

Holidays for the Education sector

Conclusion

There are plenty of Public Holidays in Greece, most of them due to religious feasts and some national anniversaries.

The public sector, what we call Civil Servants in Greece seems quite favored with several holidays.

Also in education, there are several weeks a year when schools remain closed, but this does not mean that education is poor, but the opposite.

On the contrary, the private sector appears to be the one with the least hours of free time.

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