I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book. — Groucho Marx (1890 – 1977) American Jewish comedian, film star and one of the Marx Brothers
This project offers an overview of Dutch holidays (Nederlandse feestdagen) from 2010 until the year 2050. The available are:
- in Dutch: NederlandseFeestdagen.ics
- in English: DutchHolidays.ics
- in German: NiederlaendischeFeiertage.ics
- in French: JoursFeriesAuxPaysBas.ics
- in Spanish: VacacionesHolandesas.ics
In the non-Dutch versions, the Dutch name is used first first and the translation is in brackets. This is because not all holidays can be unambiguously translated, they do not exist in the other language or they do exist but with a different meaning or with a different date. Examples that are prone for confusion with English are Liberation Day, Mothers' Day, Fathers' Day, Veterans Day etc.
Public holidays in the Netherlands can be official or nonofficial, can be free from work or not, can be national, regional or local and can be religious. This makes it not an easy task to select which public holidays to include and which not. Therefore the selection offered here is based upon the following criteria.
All holidays in the Netherlands which effect office hours. This can result in total closure of a business or people leaving early. Subsequently this can effect (part of) the country's infrastructure. The goal is to make people aware about the risk of planning events on or near those days. People, businesses and public services are probably not available as usual.
Perhaps you do not celibate certain religious holidays but your family, friends, colleagues, suppliers or customers do. Next to making you aware of planning risks, this calendar of course also indicates when you might have days off.
School holidays are omitted because they differ throughout the country, are dependent on the level of education and are not planned many years in advance. Most businesses in the Netherlands operate normally during school holidays.
Official Dutch public holidays here are of calendar category Public Holiday. All other holidays have a calendar category called Unofficial Public Holiday. Whether or not this constitutes a free day is entirely up to the line of work. With the exception of Liberation Day, all of category Public Holiday usually result in a day off.
See also the articles Feestdagen in Nederland, Public holidays in the Netherlands and Fêtes et jours fériés aux Pays-Bas on Wikipedia.
The calendars provided here are in iCalendar or ICS format. Calendar software that can display these holiday calendars are:
- for OS-X, Windows and Linux: Mozilla Thunderbird
- web-based and indirectly on Android too: Google Calendar
- for Android only: ICSdroid from Google Play or F-Droid
- for Android only: CalDAV-Sync from Google Play and soon on F-Droid too
- for OS-X only: Calendar
- for iOS only: iCloud Calendar
- for Windows only: Microsoft Outlook
- web-based: Microsoft Outlook.com
See also this list of applications with iCalendar support on Wikipedia, with many more native calendar clients and web-based systems such as Nextcloud. Please note that many CMS software support displaying ICS calendars.
Most calendar software can show these Dutch holidays to a color of your choice. Also in some software, a distinction in colour can be configured according to the calendar categories Public Holiday and Unofficial Public Holiday.
Warning: Please, do not import these ICS files into your calendar as they will be added only once and never get updated. Add these calendars as a shared (read-only) network calendar. These calendars do not need frequent updates, however, sometimes bugs are fixed, future years are added or holidays change in date or in name. See for example the transition from Queen's Day to King's Day, that also got another date. Most software will have a maximum update frequency of once a week, which is fine for these calendars. Syncing should also configured to take place only from server to client, computer or phone.
The calendar with Dutch Holidays in Dutch can be found at:
- development version https://raw.github.com/PanderMusubi/dutch-holidays/master/NederlandseFeestdagen.ics hosted by GitHub
- stable version https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thundernest/thunderbird-website/master/media/caldata/DutchHolidays.ics hosted by Thunderbird Github.
The calendar with Dutch Holidays in English (with Dutch translation) can be found at:
- development version https://raw.github.com/PanderMusubi/dutch-holidays/master/DutchHolidays.ics hosted by GitHub
- stable version https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thundernest/thunderbird-website/master/media/caldata/DutchHolidaysEnglish.ics hosted by Thunderbird Github.
The calendar with Dutch Holidays in German (with Dutch translation) can be found at:
- development version https://raw.github.com/PanderMusubi/dutch-holidays/master/NiederlaendischeFeiertage.ics hosted by GitHub
- stable version https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thundernest/thunderbird-website/master/media/caldata/DutchHolidaysGerman.ics hosted by Thunderbird Github.
The calendar with Dutch Holidays in French (with Dutch translation) can be found at:
- development version https://raw.github.com/PanderMusubi/dutch-holidays/master/JoursFeriesAuxPaysBas.ics hosted by GitHub
- stable version https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thundernest/thunderbird-website/master/media/caldata/DutchHolidaysFrench.ics hosted by Thunderbird Github.
The calendar with Dutch Holidays in Spanish (with Dutch translation) can be found at:
- development version https://raw.github.com/PanderMusubi/dutch-holidays/master/VacacionesHolandesas.ics hosted by GitHub
The files are generated from the directories scripted-holidays, unscripted-holidays and templates by running generate.py. This will output *.ics files. The script report.sh will write a short overview in names-used-*.txt.
See also the following websites: