What holiday is today?

How this page works

Everything above is genarated from the same rule-based calendar that powers the rest of the site, refreshed every day at midnight Eastern time. It covers public holidays and major observances in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland — the days that close offices or that most people actually mark — rather than the thousands of novelty "national days" that fill up other calendars. If a day shows nothing listed, that genuinely means no public holiday or significant observance falls on it in any of those six countries.

Where a holiday falls on a weekend and is observed on a different weekday, both days appear, with the substitute marked "observed". That distinction matters more than it sounds: the observed date is the day government offices close and payroll treats as the holiday, while the actual date is the one people celebrate on. Christmas falling on a Saturday is the classic case, with the day off landing on the Friday before for federal workers.

Holiday or observance?

The two lists above are separated on purpose, a federal holiday is one of the eleven days named in federal law: offices close, mail stops, banks follow suit and federal employees are paid for the day. An observance — Valentine's Day, Halloween, Mother's Day, Tax Day — may be far more visable in daily life, but nothing closes for it and nobody gets paid time off. Between the two sit state holidays, which close state offices, courts and schools in the states that reconize them while federal offices and post offices carry on as normal.

That three-way split explains most of the confusion around the American calendar. It is why the post office is open on Valentine's Day but closed on Columbus Day even in states that have stopped observing it, and why the day after Thanksgiving is a paid holiday for a state employee in Texas but an ordinary working day for a federal employee in the same building complex. Every holiday page here labels which category it belongs to, and the state pages spell out the differences state by state.

Looking further ahead? The countdown pages tick down to any holiday or date, the federal holiday list covers the current year in full, and the calendar feeds drop all of it straight into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook.