Home, Leisure and Gifts
The Home is place of Comfort
A home is a place of residence or refuge and comfort. It is usually a place in which an individual or a family can rest and be able to store personal property. Most modern-day households contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food. Animals have their own homes as well, either living in the wild or in a domesticated environment. A home has no physical definition, rather it is a mental or emotional state of belonging.
There are certain cultures in which members lack permanent homes, such as with nomadic people.
The word "home" can be used for various types of residential comunity institutions in which people can live, such as nursing homes, group homes (orphanages for children, retirement homes for seniors, prisons for criminals, treatment facilities, etc.), and foster homes.
In computer terminology, a 'home' may refer to a starting view that branches off into other tasks, e.g. a homepage or a desktop. Many such home pages on the internet start with introductory information, recent news or events, and links to subpages. "Home" may also refer to a home directory which contains the personal files of a given user of the computer system.
Leisure or Free Time
Leisure or free time, is a period of time spent out of work and essential domestic activity. It is also the period of recreational and discretionary time before or after compulsory activities such as eating and sleeping, going to work or running a business, attending school and doing homework, household chores, and day-to-day stress. The distinction between leisure and compulsory activities is loosely applied, i.e. people sometimes do work-oriented tasks for pleasure as well as for long-term utility. Leisure studies is the academic discipline concerned with the study and analysis of leisure.
The word leisure comes from the Latin word licere, meaning "to be permitted" or "to be free," via Old French leisir, and first appeared in the early fourteenth century. The notions of leisure and leisure time are thought to have emerged in Victorian Britain in the late nineteenth century, late in the Industrial Revolution. Early factories required workers to perform long shifts, often up to eighteen hours per day, with only Sundays off work. By the 1870s though, more efficient machinery and the emergence of trade unions resulted in decreases in working hours per day, and allowed industrialists to give their workers Saturdays as well as Sundays off work.
Affordable and reliable transport in the form of railways allowed urban workers to travel on their days off, with the first package holidays to seaside resorts appearing in the 1870s, a trend which spread to industrial nations in Europe and North America. As workers channeled their wages into leisure activities, the modern entertainment industry (beginning with the film industry) emerged in industrialized nations, catering to entertain workers on their days off. This Victorian concept-the weekend-heralded the beginning of leisure time as it is known today.
A Gift or a Present
A gift or a present is the transfer of something, without the need for compensation that is involved in trade. A gift is a voluntary act which does not require anything in return. Even though it involves possibly a social expectation of reciprocity, or a return in the form of prestige or power, a gift is meant to be free.
In many human societies, the act of mutually exchanging money, goods, etc. may contribute to social cohesion. Economists have elaborated the economics of gift-giving into the notion of a gift economy.
By extension the term gift can refer to anything that makes the other happier or less sad, especially as a favor, including forgiveness and kindness.