text: It is customary for the cotton mills etc., to close for Whitsuntide week to give the hands a holiday; the men going to the races etc. and the women visiting Manchester on Whit-Saturday, thronging the markets, the Royal Exchange and the Infirmary Esplanade, and other public places: And gazing in at the shop windows, whence this day is usually called 'Gaping Sunday'.
  Whit Monday was officially recognised as a bank holiday in the UK in 1871, but lost this status in 1972 when the fixed Spring Bank Holiday was created.
  In literature
  1485: Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur has the Knights of the Round Table witness a divine vision of the Holy Grail on a Whitsunday, prompting their quest to find its true location.
  1607: Thomas Middleton refers to "the Whitsun holy-days" in Michaelmas Term (IV.i.73).
  1611: In Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale Perdita imagines that she plays "as I have seen them do / In Whitsun pastorals" (IV.iv.133-34).
  1617: James I's Declaration of Sports encouraged "Whitsun ales", among other things, as soon as church was over on a Sunday.
  1633: George Herbert wrote a poem called "Whitsunday", first published in The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations.
  1759-67: Laurence Sterne's novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman contains several allusions to Whitsuntide.