The Gadgets Page

I switched over to a Mac a little over two years ago. I have used iCal for that long and it has always bugged me that the calendar didn’t show my holidays. Since computers are used all over the world, it’s a little egocentric for me to expect the built in calendar program to have U.S. holidays, but I had no idea how to get the holidays into my calendar without putting them in myself.

Fortunately, there IS a way. When you’re in iCal, you choose Calendar and then Subscribe. It will ask for a URL to subscribe to. Finding the appropriate calendar for your country is DIFFICULT, so I looked at our traffic and found the calendars for the top five countries that access The Gadgets Page:

• Apple – US Holiday Calendar
• Apple – United Kingdom Holiday Calendar
• Apple – Canadian Holiday Calendar
• Apple – Australian Holiday Calendar – New South Wales (NSW)
• Apple – German Holiday Calendar

Once you’ve subscribed to a calendar, all your holidays are there for you. If there is a holiday that is continually moved with no rhyme nor reason (like the Daylight Savings fiasco in the U.S.), then you might want to have your calendar check for updates. To do that, highlight the calendar, right click on it and choose Get Info. Once you’re there, choose Auto-Refresh and change the setting appropriately.

I thought that I could live without having the U.S. Holidays on my iCal until last year when I scheduled a geek event on Easter weekend. It wasn’t until it was too late that I realized that we wouldn’t have anyone attend because of the overlooked holiday. If the lack of holidays on iCal had caused you similar troubles, you can now add your country’s holiday to your calendar.