4 Eternal Holidays

The eternal holiday list is created only for dates after AD 29. It is assumed that the Gregorian Reformation has occurred from 10th till 22nd March 1924 for all Christian-Orthodox holidays, which are inserted into the eternal holiday list.

The eternal holiday list can be displayed in different ways:

If you start Gcal without an explicit (fiscal) date and the eternal holiday list argument (see Calendar option --holiday-list[=long|short]), e.g.:

gcal -qfr --holiday-list
gcal -qfr -n
gcal -qfr -n :

Gcal displays all holidays of the eternal holiday list that refer to the actual / fiscal year, without a leading calendar sheet.

In case you start Gcal with the eternal holiday list argument and a month (plus an additional year), e.g.:

gcal -qbe --holiday-list july
gcal -qbe -n july
gcal -qbe -n 7 1993
gcal -qbe -n 7/1993

Gcal displays a month calendar sheet of the specified month (of year), and trailing those holidays of the eternal holiday list that refer to the given month (of the given year).

If you start Gcal with the eternal holiday list argument and a simple year (or an explicit fiscal year), e.g.:

gcal -qbe --holiday-list 1993
gcal -qbe -n 1993
gcal -qbe -n july:
gcal -qbe -n :1993
gcal -qbe -n 7:1993

Gcal displays a year calendar sheet of the specified year or fiscal year, and trailing all holidays of the eternal holiday list that refer to the given year or fiscal year.

In case you start Gcal with the eternal holiday list argument and a special 3-Month mode command (see 3-Month mode commands), e.g.:

gcal -qbe --holiday-list .
gcal -qbe -n .
gcal -qbe -n ..
gcal -qbe -n .+
gcal -qbe -n .-

Gcal displays the according three months by using a fixed-style year calendar sheet, and trailing all holidays of the eternal holiday list that refer to these months.

In case you start Gcal with the eternal holiday list argument and a list or range of commands, it produces the according series of eternal holiday lists. See Lists of commands, and Ranges of commands, for further details.

Some annotations:

The following table lists all those characters which are used for marking an entry in the eternal holiday list, i.e. directly lead its date:

By using the --cc-holidays=cc[+…] option, it is possible to provide the eternal holiday list with additional country specific holidays. Thereafter, those country specific holidays are part of the list. See Calendar option --cc-holidays=cc[+…]. For example:

--cc-holidays=be+fr

causes the inclusion of Belgian and French holidays into the eternal holiday list. The inclusion of country specific holidays is not coupled to Gcal’s internationalization (see Aspects in Internationalization). This means, no country specific holidays are automatically respected at program start-up for a definite territory or country. So it is up to the user to decide which country specific holidays are included into the eternal holiday list. See The GCAL environment variable, for information how Gcal can be induced to include the country specific holidays automatically into the eternal holiday list at program start-up.

The free selection of the different country specific holidays can be used very ingenious in case information of a definite territory or country is required. Assuming a business man from Germany proposes to travel to Italy in November and needs the information which legal holidays are celebrated there on working days so he is able to plan his dates. This can be determined as follows:

gcal -f /dev/null -q IT -D r -cE nov