field day

Some postulate the idiomatic usage is derived from the "parade day" military use. A parade is much easier than the soldiers’ usual drilling and intense exercise.

• "They went to the park and had a field day playing on the swings."
• "A family of frisky squirrels was having a field day amongst the towering obstacle course of foliage."
• "The reporters will have a field day with a comment like that."
• "The scandal was a field day for the press."
• "What a field day for the heat (Ooo-ooo-ooo) / A thousand people in the street (Ooo-ooo-ooo) / Singing songs and a-carryin' signs (Ooo-ooo-ooo) / Mostly say "Hooray for our side" (Ooo-ooo-ooo)"
• "It had become a legal nightmare. All parties had retained attorneys; the community and press were having a field day."
• "I thought I'd been so thorough, so efficient, and so cost conscious, but look where I was now. The devil was having a field day with my head."
• "The reporters were having a field day with our saga and the courtroom filled with spectators."
• "The Russian foreign ministry had a field day denouncing what it called western propaganda as a high-level lie."

• open field