Germany: Saturday is (usually) a working day

[nicbou]

Describe the bug

In Germany, a Werktag usually includes saturdays, while an Arbeitstag does not. It depends on the situation.

See the following definitions with additional sources:

• Werktag definition
• Arbeitstag definition

To Reproduce
Provide an unambiguous set of steps to reproduce this bug.
Include code to reproduce, if relevant.

1. holidays.country_holidays('DE', subdiv='BE').is_working_day('2026-01-31') returns False, while it should return True since it's a saturday

Expected behavior

is_working_day might need to include an extra argument: 'include_saturdays', since the definition varies depending on context.

Environment

• holidays version: 0.89

[Aman123933]

I’d like to look into this and better understand the expected behavior before making any changes. Please let me know if it’s okay for me to explore this further and share my findings here.

[nicbou]

By all means! It's just a quirk I noticed while reading the documentation. I do not need this feature personally. I only use holidays for the list of public holidays, and I am very grateful for it.

[Aman123933]

Thanks for the clarification, that makes sense. Since this is more of an optional use case and not something you need right now, I’ll hold off on pursuing this further.