Holiday almanacs

Sixty-two holiday almanacs — named, coloured layers of commitments, like separate calendars — come with the app: twenty countries and forty-two faiths and traditions. Each one is already filled in, and each arrives locked so nothing in it changes by accident.

They are ordinary almanacs holding ordinary commitments. Every date was copied from a published calendar — a government gazette or holiday list, or a faith body's own calendar — or follows a published rule from a published date, such as "the monday after easter". Nothing is worked out while the app runs.

All sixty-two are free. None of them counts toward the three almanacs you can make without Gold, so you can turn on as many as you like.

#Choosing which ones you see

You choose on the very first page of a fresh install, "your starting sky". Your phone's own country starts switched on, read from the region of the phone's language setting, and nothing else does. Switch on whatever you keep and tap "· begin ·". See Install & make it your calendar.

• The ones you switched on stand in the binder — the screen that holds all your almanacs — and draw on the calendar.
• The ones you left off wait in the archive, the binder's shelf for almanacs taken off the calendar, whole and ready. Nothing in them is lost.

#Lighting one later

Every holiday almanac in the archive is locked, so it takes three steps to bring one back:

1. Open the binder and turn to the archive with "▣", the shelves button in the bottom-left corner.
2. Tap the almanac once to choose it, then tap "unlock" — the padlock — at the foot.
3. Tap "▥ put back".

It comes back at the end of the binder, eclipsed — kept, with a chip, but not yet drawn. Tap its chip in the legend (the cluster of almanac chips on the calendar), or tap "● shine" at the binder's foot, to draw it. You can lock it again first if you like; shining works while it is locked. See The shelves — binder, archive & pyre.

#Turning one on or off

settings › "the almanacs" lists every holiday almanac the app ships, each with its mark, its name and a switch. Under the title "the almanacs" it says: "every almanac zenith ships. on, it is in the binder, lit. off, it is nowhere on this phone until you turn it back on — nothing in it is lost, and a lock does not stop it. none of these count toward your three free almanacs."

They are grouped as "your starting sky" groups them: "countries", shown open, then "faiths", in five lines that open and close — "christian churches", "muslim communities", "buddhist reckonings", "hindu" and "more faiths and traditions". Each line counts its almanacs, and once any is on it says how many: "▸ christian churches · 13 · 2 on".

• On brings the almanac back into the binder, lit, in its own place in the binder's order. One switched off before comes back whole, with everything you had added to it.
• Off takes it off this phone entirely: out of the binder, the archive, the legend and the sky. The lock does not stop it.
• One in the archive counts as on. To light it, or to put away one that is on, use the binder.

The page's foot says: "an almanac switched off keeps every holiday, and anything you added to it, for the day you switch it on again. to light or put away one that is on, use the binder." "· close ·" leaves.

The two astrology almanacs have no switch here. Your own almanacs never do. The sky can turn these almanacs on or off too, behind "allow destructive actions". See What the sky can do — almanacs, settings & the rest.

#Short names

Their names are short, because they sit in the year's footer and the legend. None says "holidays".

• A country goes by its name, with "usa", "uk" and "korea" kept short.
• A faith with one tradition goes by its name: "sikh", "jain".
• A branch goes by its own name — "sunni", "coptic", "lutheran" — with the religion or region in brackets only where the name alone would be unclear: "byzantine (catholic)", "orthodox (ethiopia)", "buddhist (korea)", "theravada (thailand)".

#The sixty-two

They are grouped here as "your starting sky" groups them. "Dated to" is the last year that the moving days are recorded for. Where an almanac's moving days stop in different years, the table gives the year most of them stop and names the few that run on; the almanac's own page gives the furthest year any of its days reach. Days kept on a fixed date or weekday repeat every year with no end.

#Countries · 20

#Christian churches · 13

#Muslim communities · 7

#Buddhist reckonings · 10

#Hindu · 2

#More faiths and traditions · 10

#Every group keeps its own dates

Every group that keeps its own dates has its own almanac. Two groups share an almanac only when every date matches. So eritrean and ethiopian orthodox are two almanacs, with their shared days in both, and ahmadiyya is always its own, never inside another muslim almanac.

• sunni and shia are separate, beside five more muslim communities that keep their own dates.
• Each buddhist reckoning has its own almanac, because each country's calendar falls differently.
• The lutheran almanac also carries the two apostles' days that the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod keeps on other dates, titled "… (missouri synod)".

Daoist, taoist and china are three different things. "daoist" is organized Daoism: the three primes and the deity birthdays kept with temple rites. "taoist" is Chinese folk practice: the festivals families keep, from the new year to dongzhi. "china" is the People's Republic's official days off, a government's list, so it is named like the other countries. The daoist and taoist pages each begin by saying which one they are.

The catholic almanac stands on its own, whole: its own Easter, its own Christmas, everything. You turn on the tradition you live by, not a base plus an add-on. Its movable feasts use the same western Easter table as the christian almanac, so the two never drift apart. The christian almanac keeps the annunciation, saint mary the virgin (the assumption) and christ the king, which anglicans, lutherans and methodists keep on the same days. Only corpus christi belongs to the catholic almanac alone.

#Each holiday says what it is

Every holiday in all sixty-two carries three short paragraphs in its notes:

• what it is;
• where it comes from, as its own tradition tells it — or, for a national day, as that country tells it;
• how it is kept.

Tap a holiday in the day's list to focus it, then tap it again to open its page and read them. In the day view the focused row already shows the start of them.

#Where the dates come from, and where they stop

Each almanac ends where its published record ends. Moving days run to 2045 at most, and many stop sooner because their source publishes only a year or two at a time. Sri Lanka gazettes its poya days a year at a time. The Sikh calendar is released one year each March. Oman, Yemen and the Ahmadiyya community date a month only once it is announced.

A year past the record shows nothing rather than a guessed day. Each almanac's page says who publishes its dates, whose reckoning it follows, where a day may move once the moon is seen, and "recorded through ‹year›".

• A day kept on its date or weekday — christmas, the third monday of january — is one yearly entry with no end.
• A day that moves — eid, vesak, a gurpurab, easter — is an entry on each published date. A festival of several days is one entry across all of them.

#Colours and marks

Every almanac of one religion wears that religion's colour: christian ice blue, hindu rose, muslim mint, buddhist lilac, daoist and taoist pale gold. A country or a single faith keeps its own colour.

Each faith almanac wears the mark its community uses. The marks are text characters, so they take the almanac's colour; the smaller muslim communities wear plain neutral marks. Countries wear their flags, which keep their own colours, because a flag has no text form. "anglican (england)" and "episcopal" have no text form of their own emblems, so they wear plain crosses, ✙ and ✚. A mark you chose yourself is never overwritten.

#Because they ship with the app

• They arrive locked. Unlock one and it becomes an ordinary almanac you can rename, add to, retire or send to the pyre, where thrown-away things wait thirty days. See The lock.
• They are free. None counts toward your three free almanacs.
• They start out of the almanac fan on the year, so a day's holidays stay on the year's ring instead of fanning out on their own. If you turn that switch on for one, it stays on. See Edit an almanac.

If you already have an almanac of your own under one of these names, holding your own commitments, the shipped set goes into an almanac of its own beside it. Yours is never filled.

#See also.

Install & make it your calendar · The shelves — binder, archive & pyre · Sky & astrology almanacs · The lock