Holiday almanacs

Ten almanacs of holidays come with the app — an almanac is one of your calendars, a named, coloured layer of commitments. There is one per tradition or country. Each arrives already filled and locked. They are ordinary almanacs holding ordinary commitments — the events on your calendar — and nothing is worked out while the app runs.

#The ten

Beside them, "personal", "work" and "celestial" are on after a fresh install. "astrology · western" and "astrology · vedic" start eclipsed.

There is no "add holidays" screen. You turn each one on or off like any other almanac — from its chip in the legend, the row of almanac chips you tap to show or hide them, or from its page. The binder — the page where all your almanacs live — lists them with the rest.

#How the days are kept

• Days that stay put — christmas, or the 3rd monday of january — are yearly repeats.
• Days that move — easter, eid, diwali, passover, chinese new year — are written out as a separate one-off commitment on each of their dates. They were read once from a table shipped in the app.
• Twenty years. The recorded tables run from 2026 through 2045. Nothing past 2045 is placed. A year past the record shows nothing, rather than a guessed day. The US and México fixed days and weekday rules repeat without an end.
• Festivals of several days run as one all-day commitment: passover, sukkot, hanukkah, shavuot, the last ten nights, the days of tashriq, and chhath puja.
• One night, one name. The chinese and taoist almanacs both call the fifteenth night of the seventh month "zhongyuan · hungry ghost festival".

#What each one tells you

Each holiday says what it is. The eight faith and tradition almanacs — jewish, islamic, christian, hindu, buddhist, chinese, taoist and orthodox — carry a line for each day. It is written from inside the tradition, kept in the commitment's notes, and read on its page. The US and México almanacs carry no such lines.

Each almanac says where its dates came from. Its "what it is for" reads "dates as published by ‹source› · recorded through 2045". Some add whose reckoning it is:

• christian — the western calendar;
• hindu — new delhi's days;
• islamic — "a night begins at sunset the evening before the date shown.";
• jewish — the diaspora reckoning;
• buddhist — the indian reckoning.

Orthodox has its own description, naming which churches keep the julian dates.

#Rules they follow

• Locked on arrival. The lock — a locked almanac refuses every change until you unlock it — is on from the start.
• Free. Stock almanacs never count toward your three free almanacs.
• One "holidays · united states". On first run, the app's own "holidays" almanac is filled with the United States set and renamed. You never get a second "holidays" beside it. If a phone already had both, a first-run "holidays" left exactly as the app made it is folded in. Its four yearly days — new year, valentine's, halloween and christmas — move across, none doubled. One you changed in any way stays yours.
• Never over your own. If you already have an almanac of the same name holding your own commitments, the shipped set goes into an almanac of its own beside it.

See also. Sky & astrology almanacs · The lock · Almanacs & the legend · Calendar systems & names