US holidays and observances

Federal holidays are the eleven days set by federal law, from New Year's Day to Christmas Day. Observances are widely marked but close no federal offices: Valentine's Day, Flag Day, Election Day and the two daylight-saving switches. Religious entries are the Western Christian dates tied to Easter, and the fun filter adds Groundhog Day and April Fools' Day. One filter always stays on. Selecting an entry opens its description and its date for seven years, from the year before the one on screen to five after.

Nothing is looked up in a table. Fixed dates sit on the same day each year; movable ones come from a rule, such as the third Monday of January for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the fourth Thursday of November for Thanksgiving and the last Monday of May for Memorial Day. Some rules add an offset, which is how Election Day becomes the Tuesday after the first Monday in November and Black Friday the day after Thanksgiving. Easter comes from the Western computus, with Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Ash Wednesday and Mardi Gras counted back from it by 7, 2, 46 and 47 days.

The federal card applies the weekend rule in two parts: a holiday falling on a Saturday is observed the Friday before under 5 U.S.C. § 6103(b), and one falling on a Sunday the Monday after under section 3(a) of Executive Order 11582 of 11 February 1971. There are no exceptions among the eleven. Where the two differ it prints both dates, and the shift can leave the year on screen. New Year's Day 2022 fell on a Saturday, so the observed day was Friday 31 December 2021. Nothing else shifts: the month list always shows the date a day actually falls on, so an observance landing on a Sunday stays there.

With all four pills switched on the board carries 34 entries, and it carries the same 34 in every year you page to: eleven federal holidays, sixteen observances, five Easter-based religious days and two fun ones. That is why the count in the last box only moves when you switch a category off. Turn off Observances and it drops to eighteen; leave Federal on its own and it reads eleven.

The strip above the list

The first three boxes answer one question between them: what is coming and when. Next up is the earliest entry on or after today among the categories you have left on, so it can change when you press a pill rather than when the date changes. Countdown works in whole calendar days rather than hours, so today's entry reads Today and tomorrow's reads one day.

Those three are tied to your own clock, not to the year in the heading, so paging back to 2019 leaves them where they are. Everything else follows the arrows: the list, the month headings, the federal card and the seven-year panel.

The card on the right takes the eleven federal days, applies the weekend rule and sorts by the observed date rather than the real one. Only five of the eleven sit on a fixed date, so no year can ever move more than three of them, and 2027 is one that moves all three. Juneteenth falls on Saturday 19 June, so the federal day is Friday 18 June. Independence Day falls on Sunday 4 July and moves to Monday 5 July. Christmas Day falls on Saturday 25 December and moves to Friday 24 December. The remaining eight land on weekdays and print a single date with no second line beneath them.

The Christmas one is worth a second look, because it puts the federal Christmas on the same day as the Christmas Eve row in the month list. The two cards answer different questions. The list says when a day falls; the card says which day the federal working calendar treats as the holiday.

The seven-year panel is unshifted

Selecting a row opens a table of that entry across seven years, and every date in it comes straight from the rule. No weekend shift is applied there, even for the eleven that get one. Read the panel for the pattern a rule produces, and the federal card for the day an office is shut.