'Holiday' in the Bible
Then the king held a great banquet, Esther’s banquet, for all his officials and his servants; and he made a festival for the provinces and gave gifts in accordance with the resources of the king.
In each and every province and in each and every city, wherever the king’s command and his decree arrived, the Jews celebrated with gladness and joy, a feast and a holiday. And many among the peoples of the land became Jews, for the fear of the Jews [and their God] had fallen on them.
Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in the rural [unwalled] towns, make the fourteenth day of the month of Adar a holiday for rejoicing and feasting and sending choice portions of food to one another.
because on those days the Jews rid themselves of their enemies, and as the month which was turned for them from grief to joy and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and rejoicing and sending choice portions of food to one another and gifts to the poor.