focus-shift/jollyday

Support additional holiday types

Opened this issue · 4 comments

More information

Building on #482 and #462, which redefine 'official' holidays as 'public' holidays and introduce a new 'bank' holiday type respectively, a discussion should be had on what, if any, other holiday types should be considered for inclusion.

Assuming PR #467 goes through, Jollyday would support the following holiday types:

  • Public: Public holiday
  • Bank: Bank holiday, banks and offices are closed
  • Unofficial: Holidays which are not public or bank holidays (Depreciated)

The original PR suggests types "Schools" (where schools are closed) and "Authorities" (where government offices/services are closed).

For consideration:

  • Observed: Popular/common religious or cultural holidays where governments/businesses/schools normally do not close (such as April Fool's Day, Eid al-Adha, Diwali, St. Patrick's Day, Halloween, Yom Kippur in Canada)
  • Commemorative: Not necessarily holidays, per se, but designated days to commemorate or recognize a person or event (such as International Women's Day, or in Canada, the Anniversary of the Statute of Westminster)

@kmcbride3 thanks for your input. I really appreciate it!

I would suggest the following


Public: Public holiday
Description: Public holidays are days when most of the public enjoys a paid non-working days. These days are determined by local laws and regulations. Countries use various names for these official non-working days, such as:

Other Names for Public Holiday Country Businesses
Bank Holiday United Kingdom Closed
National Holiday Most Countries Closed
Red Days Norway Closed
Regular Holidays Philippines Closed
Restricted Holidays India Closed
Statutory Holiday Canada Closed

We will declare all of these as Public Holiday

Bank: Bank holiday, banks and offices are closed
Description: Bank holidays are days when financial institutions and government offices (and government-regulated businesses) are closed as determined by local laws and regulations. Other businesses, such as offices and retail stores, may also be closed on these days, though are not mandated to by local laws and regulations.

Observance Observance, is a celebration or commemoration that doesn't include a day off from work.
Description: When people celebrate or commemorate something, but do not have a day off from work for that reason, we call it an observance.

There are different types of observance like Religious, Secular, Awareness, International or National observance. We will declare all of these as Observance

Unofficial: Holidays which are not public or bank holidays (Deprecated)
Description: Unofficial holidays are deprecated and will be replaced by the other types over time.


Maybe this types are enough to start and we can add more if we need them. Or are there must haves?

@derTobsch I like it. I can see many people considering 'School' as a must-have, for example if they're using Jollyday in their home automation system and want to build rules around whether or not it's a 'school' day. On the other hand, those dates would vary from location to location, even down to city level (and possibly lower - school district or even per school themselves)... plus they could change from year-to-year. As a compromise, perhaps the holiday.xsd definition should support 'School' as a type, but given the specificity of this type, we don't define those holiday types in each country's holiday definitions -- end users would have to augment them on their own with the school dates relevant to their use case.

For clarity on Public Holidays, would that definition mean that some previously unofficial holidays now become public holidays if they meet the definition as "days when most of the public enjoys a non-working days" if local laws designate them as non-working days, though they do not require employees to be paid for them? Thinking specifically about "prescribed days of rest" in New Brunswick (NB), Canada, where provincial law declares them as non-working days, however they are not statutory (that is, employers are not obligated to pay employees for these non-working days, although many do).

If the intent is to keep "Public Holidays" strictly to where most of the public enjoys a paid non-working day as determined by local laws, then I would recommend including 'paid' in the Public Holiday definition - such as:

Public: Public holiday
Description: Public holidays are days when most of the public enjoys as paid non-working days. These days are determined by local laws and regulations.

If the originally-proposed definition for Public Holidays is correct (as in, it doesn't matter whether people are paid for these non-working days or not), I'm good with that too.

I suggest this definition for Bank holidays:

Bank: Bank holiday
Description: Bank holidays are days when financial institutions and government offices (and government-regulated businesses) are closed as determined by local laws and regulations. Other businesses, such as offices and retail stores, may also be closed on these days, though are not mandated to by local laws and regulations.

I also wonder if including UK's bank holidays as Public holidays, and then having a separate holiday type of 'Bank' would be confusing for some. Would something akin to 'Government' holiday be more apt?

Hey @kmcbride3,
I updated the public holiday definition with paid and also used your definition of bank holidays.

I would like to start without school holidays for the moment. We can add them later if we need them.

I thought the same about the naming of 'bank holidays' and I am not sure if there is a better "official" naming at the moment. I need to take a deeper look at that.

Works for me, thank you for considering my feedback! I fully agree about the naming of 'bank holidays' - I couldn't think of a better name myself that would be more recognized/official.