The American Calendar · 2026
Every federal holiday, heritage month, day of remembrance and cultural observance — with who actually marks it, what established it, and the harder history where there is one.
Some days are shared by two observances that mean different things. Those are shown together, at the same size, because rendering one as a footnote would be an argument rather than a calendar.
Thursday, January 1
The first day of the Gregorian calendar year.
Made a federal holiday in 1870, in the first act establishing holidays for federal employees in the District of Columbia.
Monday, January 19
A federal holiday on the third Monday in January, near Dr. King's January 15 birthday.
Signed into law in 1983 after a fifteen-year campaign that began four days after his assassination in 1968.
The bill was introduced in 1968 and took fifteen years to pass, against sustained opposition. Some states resisted for years afterward and used alternate names; all fifty observed it by 2000. The holiday is not evidence that the argument was won easily.
All of February
A month recognising the history and achievements of Black Americans.
Grew from Negro History Week, established in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, timed to the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
Monday, February 16
The third Monday in February. Widely called Presidents' Day, but that is not its legal name.
Established as a federal holiday in 1879 for the District of Columbia and extended nationally in 1885; moved to a Monday in 1971.
A small but real lesson in how names drift: the federal statute still says Washington's Birthday, and the third Monday in February can never fall on February 22, his actual birthday.
Thursday, February 19
Marks the signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942.
That order led to the forced removal and incarceration of about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, roughly two-thirds of them American citizens, in camps across the interior West.
The Supreme Court upheld the exclusion in Korematsu v. United States (1944). Congress apologised and authorised reparations in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, forty-six years later. The Court repudiated Korematsu in 2018. This is on the calendar because it happened here, under law, to citizens.
All of March
A month recognising the contributions of women in American history.
Began as Women's History Week in Sonoma County, California, in 1978; Congress designated a national week in 1981 and a month in 1987.
All of March
A month recognising Irish American history and contributions.
Designated by Congress in 1991, in the month containing St. Patrick's Day.
Irish immigrants arriving after the Great Hunger of the 1840s met organised hostility, including the nativist Know Nothing movement of the 1850s, which won governorships and dozens of congressional seats on an anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant platform.
Tuesday, March 17
A feast day for the patron saint of Ireland, widely observed in the United States as a celebration of Irish heritage.
The first recorded American parade was held in the eighteenth century; the tradition grew with Irish immigration.
All of April
A month recognising the history and contributions of Arab Americans.
Grown from state and local proclamations; recognised federally by proclamation beginning in 2021.
Sunday, April 5
The principal feast of the Christian year, on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox.
Computable in advance by the Gregorian computus, which is why this date is calculated here and several others on this calendar are not.
Thursday, April 16
Marks the ending of slavery in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862.
The Compensated Emancipation Act freed about 3,100 people, nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation. It is the only instance of compensated emancipation in the United States — and the compensation went to the enslavers, not the enslaved.
Owners were paid up to $300 per person freed. Formerly enslaved people received nothing, though the Act offered $100 to any who chose to emigrate. That the government could calculate a price is the part worth sitting with.
All of May
A month recognising the history and contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
May was chosen for two anniversaries: the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants on May 7, 1843, and the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869, built largely by Chinese labourers.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first federal law to bar a nationality from immigrating, and it stood until 1943. The Naturalization Act of 1790 had limited naturalisation to 'free white persons', a restriction the Supreme Court used to deny citizenship to Asian applicants as late as the 1920s.
All of May
A month recognising the history and contributions of Jewish Americans.
Proclaimed in 2006, following the 350th anniversary of the 1654 arrival of the first Jewish community in New Amsterdam.
Tuesday, May 5
Marks the Mexican army's victory at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.
Observed in the United States since the 1860s, particularly in California, where Mexican American communities marked the news of the victory.
It is not Mexican Independence Day, which is September 16. The confusion is nearly universal in the United States and is worth correcting rather than repeating.
Monday, May 25
The last Monday in May, honouring those who died in military service.
Grew from Decoration Day observances after the Civil War, in which communities decorated the graves of the war dead. One of the earliest recorded was organised in 1865 by freed Black residents of Charleston at the burial ground of Union prisoners.
It is not Veterans Day. Memorial Day is for those who died; Veterans Day is for all who served. The 1968 Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved it from its fixed May 30 date to the last Monday in May, and veterans' organisations objected for decades that the three-day weekend had displaced the observance itself.
All of June
A month recognising the contributions of Caribbean Americans.
Designated by Congress in 2006 after a campaign begun in 1999.
Sunday, June 14
Marks the adoption of the Stars and Stripes by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1777.
Established by presidential proclamation in 1916 and by Act of Congress in 1949. It is an observance, not a federal holiday — offices stay open.
Friday, June 19
Marks June 19, 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced that enslaved people there were free.
Observed by Black Texans from 1866 and carried across the country by migration. Became a federal holiday in 2021, the first new one since 1983.
The Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect two and a half years earlier. The news did not travel that slowly — enforcement required the arrival of troops. And the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery everywhere in the United States, was not ratified until December 1865, six months later.
Saturday, July 4· federal offices closed Jul 3
Marks the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
Congress voted for independence on July 2; the text was approved on July 4. John Adams expected the second to be the date remembered.
In 1852 Frederick Douglass was invited to speak on the Fourth in Rochester and asked his audience: 'What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?' He gave the speech on the fifth. It is the most important American address about this holiday and it is a criticism of it.
Monday, September 7
The first Monday in September, honouring the American labour movement and the work of ordinary people.
First observed by unions in New York in 1882. Made a federal holiday in 1894, six days after federal troops ended the Pullman Strike, in which dozens of workers were killed.
The timing was not a coincidence. The holiday was signed within a week of the strike's violent suppression, and the September date was chosen partly to avoid the international May 1 observance associated with the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago.
Tuesday, September 15
Runs September 15 to October 15 — a month that starts mid-month rather than on the first.
September 15 is the independence anniversary of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua; Mexico's falls on the 16th and Chile's on the 18th.
Thursday, September 17
Marks the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 1787, and recognises those who have become citizens.
Federal law requires every educational institution receiving federal funds to hold an educational programme on the Constitution on this day.
Thirty-nine of the 55 delegates signed. Three who were present refused, including George Mason, who objected in part that the document lacked a bill of rights — an objection that produced the first 10 amendments four years later, in 1791.
All of October
A month recognising Filipino American history.
October marks the first recorded arrival of Filipinos in what is now the United States, at Morro Bay, California, in October 1587.
Tuesday, October 6
Marks the founding of Germantown, Pennsylvania, by thirteen German families on October 6, 1683.
Revived by presidential proclamation in 1983 for the tricentennial. German ancestry is among the most commonly reported in the United States census.
German was among the most widely spoken languages in America into the twentieth century, with more than 500 German-language newspapers in print around 1900. Anti-German campaigns during the First World War closed most of them; several states banned German-language instruction outright, until the Supreme Court struck those laws down in Meyer v. Nebraska in 1923. Many families had already stopped speaking it at home within a single generation.
Monday, October 12
Observed on the second Monday in October, honouring the Indigenous nations of the Americas.
First adopted by Berkeley, California in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's landing. Now observed by a large number of states, cities and tribal nations, in some places replacing and in others accompanying Columbus Day.
Shares this date with columbus day. Both are observed. Neither replaces the other on this page.
Monday, October 12
A federal holiday on the second Monday in October, marking Columbus's 1492 landing.
Made a federal holiday in 1968, following decades of campaigning by Italian American organisations. Its adoption was closely tied to recognition of Italian Americans after a long period of discrimination, including the 1891 lynching of eleven Italian men in New Orleans.
Columbus's own journals and the eyewitness accounts of Bartolomé de las Casas record enslavement, mutilation and mass death in the Caribbean under his governorship between 1492 and 1500. Spain arrested him in 1500 and returned him to Europe in chains over his conduct as governor. Both things are on this date: an immigrant community's hard-won recognition after the 1891 lynching of eleven Italian men in New Orleans, and what the man they chose as a symbol did. Neither cancels the other, and a calendar showing only one is not telling you the truth.
Shares this date with indigenous peoples day. Both are observed. Neither replaces the other on this page.
Sunday, November 1
November 1 and 2 — days for remembering and honouring the dead, with altars, food and flowers.
A tradition with Indigenous Mesoamerican and Catholic roots, carried into the United States by Mexican American communities and widely observed in the Southwest.
It is not 'Mexican Halloween'. The days are November 1 and 2, they are about family and remembrance rather than fear, and the tradition's Mesoamerican roots long predate the arrival of Halloween in the region. The conflation flattens two different things that happen to be near each other on a calendar.
All of November
A month recognising the histories, cultures and sovereignty of Native nations.
Campaigned for from the early twentieth century — notably by Dr. Arthur C. Parker of the Seneca Nation — and designated nationally in 1990.
It shares a month with Thanksgiving, which many Native people observe as a day of mourning. Federal policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries included removal, allotment under the Dawes Act of 1887, and boarding schools designed to end Native languages. There are 574 federally recognised nations today and they govern.
Tuesday, November 3
The Tuesday next after the first Monday in November — federal general elections in even-numbered years.
Set by Congress in 1845. November suited an agricultural calendar; Tuesday allowed a day's travel to the county seat without disturbing Sunday worship or Wednesday market.
The rule is 'the Tuesday next after the first Monday', not 'the first Tuesday' — those are different dates whenever November opens on a Tuesday. The 1845 reasoning was designed for a country that no longer exists, and it is not a federal holiday, which is why voting can require taking unpaid time off.
Wednesday, November 11
November 11, honouring everyone who has served in the armed forces.
Originally Armistice Day, marking the ceasefire that ended the fighting of the First World War at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918. Renamed in 1954 to include all veterans.
For all who served, living and dead. Memorial Day is specifically for those who died, and veterans routinely correct the confusion. The 1968 Uniform Monday Holiday Act moved Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October; public objection was strong enough that Congress moved it back to November 11 in 1975, effective 1978 — the only federal holiday returned to its original date.
Thursday, November 26
The fourth Thursday in November.
Proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving by Lincoln in 1863, during the Civil War, at the urging of the writer Sarah Josepha Hale, who had campaigned for it for decades. Fixed to the fourth Thursday by Congress in 1941.
The 1621 harvest meal at Plymouth is real, and the story built on it afterward is mostly a nineteenth-century construction. The Wampanoag who were present had already lost most of their population to an epidemic brought by earlier European contact, and within a generation the relationship collapsed into King Philip's War.
Shares this date with national day of mourning. Both are observed. Neither replaces the other on this page.
Thursday, November 26
Observed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the same day as Thanksgiving.
Begun in 1970 by the United American Indians of New England, after Wamsutta Frank James was asked to withdraw a speech at a state banquet because organisers found its content unacceptable.
Shares this date with thanksgiving. Both are observed. Neither replaces the other on this page.
Monday, December 7
Marks the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, in which 2,403 Americans were killed.
Designated by Congress in 1994. Flags are flown at half-staff.
Executive Order 9066 followed ten weeks later. The Day of Remembrance in February and this day in December are the two ends of the same sequence, and a calendar that carries one without the other is telling half a story.
Friday, December 25
December 25 — a Christian feast day and a federal holiday.
Made a federal holiday in 1870. It is the only religious holiday among the federal eleven, which has been the subject of litigation; courts have upheld it on the grounds of its secular observance as well.
Saturday, December 26
Seven days from December 26 to January 1, each dedicated to one of seven principles.
Created in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, drawing on African harvest traditions, as a cultural rather than religious observance. Its seven principles are unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
Tuesday, December 29
Marks December 29, 1890, when US soldiers killed roughly 250 to 300 Lakota people, many of them women and children, at Wounded Knee Creek.
Observed by Lakota communities and others as a day of remembrance; annual memorial rides retrace the route of Spotted Elk's band.
Twenty Medals of Honor — 20 — were awarded to soldiers for the engagement. Native nations and members of Congress have sought their rescission for decades. The physician who treated the survivors, Charles Eastman, was Santee Dakota; his account is a primary source and he wrote it in English for an American readership.
These follow the Hebrew, Islamic, Hindu lunisolar or Julian calendars. We don’t implement those, so we show no date rather than a wrong one — telling somebody their own holy day is on the wrong day, with the confidence of software, is worse than saying we don’t know.
Date varies — see below
The festival of lights, observed over several days.
Follows the Hindu lunisolar calendar. Observance and dates differ by region and tradition, so no single date is computed here.
Date varies — see below
The feast marking the end of Ramadan.
Follows the same lunar calendar and the same sighting practice.
Date varies — see below
The new year on the lunisolar calendar, observed across many Asian traditions with different names and customs.
Follows a lunisolar calendar we do not implement. Called Seollal in Korean, Tết in Vietnamese, and Chinese New Year among others — not one holiday under one name.
Date varies — see below
The principal feast of the Eastern Orthodox year. Usually a different date from Western Easter.
Calculated on the Julian calendar. We do not implement that calculation, so no date is shown rather than a wrong one.
Date varies — see below
The month of fasting, ending with Eid al-Fitr.
Follows a lunar calendar, and its start is determined by moon sighting, which differs between communities. There is no single correct computed date, so none is shown.
Date varies — see below
The Jewish New Year, beginning the High Holy Days.
Follows the Hebrew calendar, which we do not implement. No date is computed here rather than a wrong one.
Date varies — see below
A day of remembrance for the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Follows the Hebrew calendar. Congress separately established the annual Days of Remembrance, observed by federal agencies in the same season.
Date varies — see below
The Day of Atonement, the most solemn day of the Jewish year.
Follows the Hebrew calendar, which we do not implement.
