Peculiar Holiday Calendar

Ever get tired of having the same holidays all the time?

Peculiar Holidays are a set of quirky alternative holidays, generated algorithmically to provide both variety & repetition as time goes along. This is the official calendar of holidays! It's entirely scripted, so you can explore holidays way out into the future, or even the past!

FAQ

Why celebrate computer-generated holidays?

For fun! Part of the reason we like holidays is because they give us a reason to get together with friends & family and do something out of the ordinary. The goal of Peculiar Holidays is to give us the same excuse, but with a little extra variety & creativity.

How do I celebrate a Peculiar Holiday?

However you want! The calendar script intentionally only generates holiday names. The rest is up to whoever is celebrating!

Does everyone's calendar look different?

No, everyone sees the same holidays. Each holiday is generated based on its date, so 5/10/2020 will always come up as Miniature Squirrelmas. It was important for everyone to have the same holidays to celebrate!

Do holidays repeat each year?

Not exactly. Repeating holidays & forming traditions is a lot of fun, but if the holidays always repeated, we'd either be stuck with the same ~40-50 holidays for eternity, or we'd have an ever-accumulating mass of holidays. Plus, we might get stuck with the same boring holiday for all of time! Instead, holidays can repeat for a few years. Some holidays may not repeat at all, others might repeat for up to 6 years. That way each year should have a few repeats and plenty of brand new holidays.

What was the first Peculiar Holiday?

I made the Peculiar Holiday back in December of 2018. If I remember right, I was finishing up the code right around the time Writer Faire (12/17/2018) hit, so I think we just kinda narroly missed that one. Then the calendar was up and running in time for Alley Catsgiving (12/22/2018).

What are the colors for?

The font/banner color of a holiday indicates its rarity. Holidays can be: Regular (Green), Special (Blue), Rare (Purple), or Legendary (Orange). You'll also notice that rarer holidays have more words in their title! Each month should have a few regular holidays, and possibly a special holiday. Rare holidays might only occur a few times a year. And legendary holidays are even more sparse! (We actually had a Legendary holiday back in 2020 -- 7/30/2020 was Entrepreneurial Fest of the Party Shorts Sun! But the next legendary holiday won't be until the 2030's!

Can I generate my own holidays?

Sure! The code is all up on GitHub, just fork it to create your own procedural-holiday calendar! You could modify the word tables to tailor the holidays to your liking, or just change the seed value in the initRolls(date) to roll an entirely new set.