With the new year starting in just a two months, I wanted to share a 2009-2010 Planning Calendar that lists the major holidays and events that affect most historic sites in the United States as well as planning tips and ideas for each month. Having one of these at my desk as I laid out my programming for the next year prompted me to consider how a holiday could affect attendance, required higher than usual staffing, competed with a community’s important holiday, offered an opportunity for additional publicity, or suggested a related educational program.
This calendar is just a foundation and for the sake of simplicity, I’ve omitted most minor, state, regional, ethnic, and religious holidays are excluded from this list (e.g., Admission Day, Robert E. Lee’s Birthday, Arbor Day, Sweetest Day, Grandparent’s Day, Oktoberfest) . Users should be aware of holidays that are locally significant and consider them in their planning and should also include the site’s and region’s major anniversaries (e.g., 100th anniversary of the city’s founding, 25th anniversary as an historic site). For dates and explanations of major holidays (starting times for holidays based on a lunar calendar are particularly complex because they often start at sunset), see when-is.com. For a handy yearly calendar that can be customized to list major and minor holidays, visit timeanddate.com/calendar. In a future posting, I’ll provide a “historic sites” version of a handy compact calendar from davidseah.com.
I recently discovered that Father’s Day and Rosh Hashanah were on the wrong dates so I’ve corrected it and posted the revised version (dated November 19, 2008 in the Fine Print) as well as on the Compact Calendar. Sorry!