
!Holidates  1.07 (08 Feb 2012)
==========

This program calculates and displays a table of the dates of various notable days for the chosen year.   Many of these days, such as Bank Holidays, are not tied to a particular calendar date but rather to a time of year, such as 'the last Monday in May'.  This program shows these dates.    I have also included several dates that do stay the same from year to year, such as the national Saint's days.  These are shown in grey.

You may be surprised by the inclusion of New Year's Day, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.  This is because it is now common practice that, if they should fall at the weekend, the day or days following are declared as substitute public holidays.  These dates are thus also shown.

This sheet may be regarded as the secular version of my !Feasts program which calculates the date of Easter and the Church's other moveable feasts.   This sheet uses essentially the same algorithm to calculate Easter Day, to which three of the dates here are closely linked.   The fact that Easter Day is a Sunday is then used as the base for my algorithms that calculate the other variable dates.

History

Bank holidays were first introduced by the Bank Holidays Act of 1871.  This act was repealed in 1971 and its provisions incorprated into the Banking and Financial Dealings Act of 1971, which remains the statutory basis for bank holidays.  In this act the Whit Monday holiday (which could fall anywhere from 11 May to 14 June) was replaced by the Spring holiday on the last Monday of May and the holiday on the first Monday in August was changed to the last Monday in August.  In 1974 New Year's Day became a bank holiday in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and Boxing Day became one in Scotland.  A further change was made in 1978 when the first Monday in May was added as an additional bank holiday, giving a total of eight each year.

Bank holidays designated since the 1971 Act are appointed each year by Royal Proclamation along with any changes needed to the Christmas, etc, holidays as mentioned above.

Since 1981 the European Community has issued Directives to unify the dates for the start and end of Summer Time throughout the member countries of the EC.  These fell broadly in line with the dates already set out in The Summer Time Act of 1972.  They are now agreed as the last Sundays in March and October at 0100 GMT.  So these dates will be historically unreliable before 1981.

To avoid any confusion the program will not display any variable dates for years before 1978.

The table may be printed if required.

This latest version has a minor adjustment to correctly display the Spring Bank Holiday for 2012 on the date to which it has been moved, 4th June, which is the day before the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Day holiday.

The program is 26/32-bit neutral and will work on all versions of RISC OS from 3.1 onwards.

This program was produced using Dr Wimp.

Subject to the conditions for distribution of the Dr Wimp library, !Holidates is
released as freeware.

 Rex Palmer 2012