The snobbery of ‘staycations’

Last summer, when Covid forced the cancellation of our holiday, my husband and I had a staycation. We read books, played games, drank Pimm’s on our patio and invented ever more imaginative ways to avoid our DIY to-do list. Each morning brought the usual bills and junk mail to our door rather than a hotel breakfast tray, and there was no one else to do the washing up or freshen up the bathroom towels.

As of this week, apparently, millions of other people are doing the same thing. The Sunday Times heralded ‘the return of the staycation’ as ‘the great unlocking begins in earnest and we are allowed to stay away from home overnight’, while the Daily Mail declared ‘It’s staycation mania!’, reporting that ‘many campsites and holiday cottages are almost fully booked’. But wait a moment: campsites? Cottages? Nights away from home? These aren’t ‘staycations’. They’re holidays.

The Covid pandemic has led to countless words being redefined and reinterpreted (‘bubble’, anyone?), but the mutation of staycation seems to have been the most contagious of all.