There is a sentence like below
The day was on christmas.
Can we replace on with at like below?
The day was at christmas.
What is the difference between the two expression?
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1Neither is natural. We say It was Christmas Day. Perhaps It was a day in the Christmas holidays.– FumbleFingersCommented Jul 5 at 1:19
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1. It happened on Christmas day– Mari-Lou ACommented Jul 5 at 5:04
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2. They stayed home at Christmas.– Mari-Lou ACommented Jul 5 at 5:06
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1This question has been asked on ELL before..The OP appears to have not done any research they can type the following string in Google : "When is "on" and "at" used with expressions of time?" It's worth pointing out when it comes to talking about Christmas, Christmas Day, and the weekend different prepositions are used in BrEng and AmEng.– Mari-Lou ACommented Jul 5 at 5:17
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1This question is similar to: Rules for "on", "at", and "in": preposition of time. If you believe it’s different, please edit the question, make it clear how it’s different and/or how the answers on that question are not helpful for your problem.– Mari-Lou ACommented Jul 5 at 5:47
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1 Answer
Neither of these really make sense, and there are a couple of ways to go depending on what it is exactly that you want to say.
If you are meaning Christmas as the single day, 25th December then you should say "It was Christmas day". It would be grammatically correct, but a bit weird to say: "the day was Christmas" or "the day was Christmas day".
If you are referring to the longer period of time around Christmas, the most natural thing to say would be "it was Christmas time". If you wanted to, you could add a preposition and it would not be weird, but it would be unnecessary - "it was (in/at/during) Christmas time". Again, it would be grammatically ok, but weird to say "the day was (in/at/during) Christmas time".
The common thread here is that it's not a common English construct to say "the day was <date-like thing>" but rather you should say "it was <date-like thing>". E.g. say "it was the 5th of July" not "the day was the 5th of July". If you're quoting a date (or something which obviously a time, etc.), then it is contextually obvious that "it" is a day.
There is an exception to this - sometimes, particularly in fiction literature, you might see "the day was <date>" where they write this for dramatic effect. The dramatic effect happens specifically because this is not a normal English construction.
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Thanks for contributing! I suggest editing to not only propose alternatives, but to directly and simply answer the OP's core question, which amounts to "can I use 'at' with a specific day?" Their followup questions highlight how this hasn't been done. Commented Jul 5 at 18:59