WASHINGTON — This week, as much of the nation enjoys a light schedule and the House of Representatives is in recess, the Senate will open for business twice and each time quickly close. It will do the same next week.

The expected “faux” sessions will be part of a rare gambit by the majority leader, Senator Reid, a Democrat of Nevada, to prevent President Bush from making any so-called recess appointments, used by presidents when a nomination is in trouble in the Senate.

“It’s unfortunate that we have to do this, but we couldn’t run the risk of the administration ramming through some of their highly controversial appointments while we were in recess,” Mr. Reid’s press secretary, Jim Manley, said. The Constitution grants the president authority to fill high-level positions without the customary Senate confirmation whenever the Senate is in recess. Historically, some recess appointments eventually have won the Senate’s blessings, including President Theodore Roosevelt’s decision in 1902 to name Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. to the Supreme Court. But many presidents — including Mr. Bush and President Clinton — have used that power to appoint judges and other officials who faced stiff opposition, and sometimes stalled nominations, on Capitol Hill.

But this year, amid suggestions that Mr. Bush might use the recess to appoint James Holsinger as surgeon general, Mr. Reid played the procedural card of keeping the Senate technically in session.

Dr. Holsinger, a professor from the University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health, has been criticized by gay-rights groups and public-health experts for a paper he wrote 16 years ago that characterized gay sex as unnatural and unhealthy. At a Senate hearing in July, he denied any anti-gay bias. But Senate Democrats have refused to bring up Dr. Holsinger’s nomination. If Mr. Bush were able to use a recess appointment to install Dr. Holsinger as surgeon general, he would be able to remain in that office until the end of Mr. Bush’s term.

The practice of recess appointments has long been contentious. In 2005, Mr. Bush appointed John Bolton to be America’s ambassador to the United Nations during a congressional recess, thereby circumventing a Democratic filibuster of Mr. Bolton’s nomination and sending him to New York. Mr. Clinton angered Republicans with his recess appointment of James Hormel to be ambassador to Luxembourg, making Mr. Hormel the country’s first openly gay ambassador.

But perhaps the most contentious recess appoint came this spring. Mr. Bush enraged Senate Democrats during Easter break by filling the vacant ambassadorship to Belgium with Sam Fox, who during the 2004 presidential campaign helped bankroll the attacks by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on the military record of a Democratic candidate, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.

Following that, Mr. Reid negotiated an agreement with the White House to avoid any appointments during the August break.

But now, with a two-week Thanksgiving recess looming, the two sides were unable to reach an agreement. Mr. Reid asked a few Democratic senators who plan to be close to the capital during the holidays — Senators Webb of Virginia, Dorgan of North Dakota, and Reed of Rhode Island — to gavel open and shut the Senate for two days each week.

During negotiations with the White House, Mr. Reid charged that the president had delayed appointing Democrats to federal boards such as the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. By law, a number of seats on these commissions are reserved for Democrats and Republicans.

“With the Thanksgiving break looming, the administration informed me that they would make several recess appointments. I indicated I would be willing to confirm various appointments if the administration would agree to move on Democratic appointments,” Mr. Reid said in a statement inserted into Friday’s Congressional Record. “I am committed to making that progress if the President will meet me half way,” Mr. Reid wrote, adding, however, that, “Progress can’t be made if the president seeks controversial recess appointments and fails to make Democratic appointments to important commissions.”