German Holidays With 15 Popular Public Holiday Phrases (Examples Incl.)

If you’ve ever spoken to a German native speaker, they might’ve mentioned that they have a lot of paid time off. Meaning that they don’t work for weeks in some cases!

How is that possible?

Well, German holidays offer a great time for relaxing, and even beside these German public holiday, Germany and other German-speaking countries offer amazing rights for employees.

Easy German (one of the most popular German language learning projects on the web) made interesting street interviews with locals, asking them about their vacations. Let’s take a look

In this blog post, we’re going to explore all of the German holidays, mentioning not just the German public holidays, but also taking a look at German school holidays and equipping you with 15 German holidays phrases that come in hand when you’re conversing with locals.

1. German holidays: national and statewide holidays in Germany

In Germany, there are some holidays that everyone celebrates, and then there are some that are only considered holidays in different federal states.

We know it sounds complicated, but this website isn’t just called Effortless Conversations so that you have conversations effortlessly, but also because we offer German culture insights to whoever wants to learn more about it.

So, here’s an all-in-one table with nationwide and statewide public holidays in Germany:

As you can see, some of these German holidays span over multiple days, like Christmas or Easter, while some are only celebrated in different federal states. Another thing you have to know about German holidays is that the school holidays follow these public holidays approximately, giving a chance for students to relax a bit.

2. German school holidays

German school holidays don’t happen at the same time across all federal states.

The timing of school holidays is staggered: each federal state has its own schedule for holidays like Sommerferien and Herbstferien..

Why is this?

Well, the reason is simple: if you would grant the summer holiday at the same time for every school, it would cause problems for tourism and traveling.

But the way it is now, summer holidays might start in late June for some states, while other states only begin their break in July.

Here’s the approximate length of all of these holidays:

This setup eases travel congestion and distributes tourism evenly across the country.

3. Holidays in other German-speaking countries

While there are public holidays (mainly religious ones) that are the same all around the world, there are different holiday that are only celebrated in other German-speaking countries.

In this section, we’re going to break it down for Austria and Switzerland.

Holidays today in Austria

Holidays today in Switzerland

4. German holiday phrases you need to know

If you’ve reached this point in the blog post, you already know enough of the German culture and the different holidays in Germany, Austria and Switzerland?

But what is it worth if you don’t know the much needed phrases to celebrate these German holidays with the locals?

Don’t worry! We’ve got you covered 😉

5. Learn German public holidays with Conversation Based Chunking

You might be wondering whether you have to learn all of the previous holiday phrases off the top of your head in German.

Good news: there’s a better way!

On Effortless Conversations, we offer a method called Conversation Based Chunking. Chunking refers to breaking up longer sentences into smaller chunks, the common German phrases that always go together, so that you learn them easily in context.

With Conversation Based Chunking, you will also learn naturally about the cultural side of things, and not just about the language itself. And, there’s only a bit of grammar included, so you’ll avoid boring definitions and rules.

What’s left? Well, you can immediately request your FREE German Conversation Based Chunking Guide to start your German language learning journey. Everything else is up to you!