Holidays in iCal
Since I switched from Firebird to iCal a little while ago as part of an effort to try this ‘integration’ thing Apple’s been proposing for the last ten years, I’ve been frustrated by one thing.
…Where are my holidays?
I always look at iCal – or any calendar – in month view, so one of the big things I use it for is holidays. What week, exactly, does Columbus Day fall in again? I could understand, intellectually, why Apple chose not to put holidays in iCal, given regional differences, but it never ceased to annoy. It got to be too much, so I used my ever-formidable google-fu and found two sites offering calendars to which holiday-needing users could subscribe.
One of them, unfortunately, seems to have been eaten by Apple’s New Features in Leopard page. “www.apple.com/ical” now redirects there, and I can’t find the old page – which was mostly about new iCal features in Tiger, but also had the links to calendars, including various holidays and sports teams. (Just one more reason for me to like Apple – subscribable Red Sox game times.)
The other, though, is iCalWorld. They have many more calendars, including user-submitted ones. So add holidays to your iCal, just in time for winter holidays!
Along on October 30th, 2007 at 6:07 am
So, Googling an obvious term for an easy solution to a well publicised feature of an Apple application is now Google-fu?
I presume you were joking, but everything ever published on the internet has to pass through the hyperbole filter these days …
I guess it’s like how ‘using’ things is now called ‘hacking’.
That said, I wonder when Apple will realise that their iCal library page has disappeared, I can’t imagine it’s deliberate.
The biggest site for sharedcalendars is probably
http://www.icalshare.com
Chris on October 30th, 2007 at 6:51 am
I noticed the same thing. When I went to get subscribe to calendars, iCal took me to a missing page on the apple site. However, upon further investigation it looks like they are now hiding the calendars under the Business and Finance category of the Downloads section of the website.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/business_finance/
Gary G on October 30th, 2007 at 9:22 am
Here’s the direct link to the US holiday calendar on Apple’s website. Thanks to Chris for the sleuthing in the Downloads section of Apple’s website. I would never have found this alone.
http://wsidecar.apple.com/cgi-bin/nph-reg3rdpty2.pl/product=15712&cat=3&platform=osx&method=sa/US32Holidays.ics
Dan Dawson on October 30th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Here’s another link to the US Holidays calendar:
http://ical.mac.com/ical/US32Holidays.ics
Stephanie Guertin on October 30th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
@Along – Yes, it was sarcasm.
@everyone else – Thanks for the alternate links!
Liz on October 31st, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Thanks for the post and to Gary G for the direct link.
Eric Tisdale on June 2nd, 2008 at 7:20 am
Here is a better site, as the one Dan sent is the code page: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars/usholidaycalendar.html
Kim on October 20th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Thanks Dan! It worked.
tatil on July 10th, 2009 at 9:55 am
Holidays in iCal very best information thank you.