I noticed that several important cultural and historical observances are no longer showing up in my default calendar app. This seems to affect various heritage months and memorial days that used to be included automatically.
For anyone wanting to manually add these back to their calendar, here are the key dates:
Cultural Observance
Time Period
African American Heritage Month
February
Latino Heritage Period
Mid-September through Mid-October
International Holocaust Memorial Day
Late January
Native Peoples Day
Second Monday in October
Jewish American Heritage Month
May
American Indian Heritage Month
November
LGBTQ+ Pride Month
June
Has anyone else experienced this issue with their calendar not displaying these important observances anymore?
Same thing happened to me 6 months ago after an iOS update. Apple quietly removed tons of these observances from their default calendar.
I fixed it by subscribing to external calendar feeds with cultural observances. National Day Calendar’s pretty good, plus there are community-maintained ones for heritage months specifically.
You can also just create recurring events for the ones you care about most. I did this for heritage months since they’re always the same dates.
Or switch to Google Calendar if you’re not tied to Apple’s ecosystem. They still include most of these in their US holidays calendar by default.
Super frustrating they removed these without warning. Only noticed when I missed adding Black History Month to my work calendar.
I’ve been fighting this same issue with multiple calendar systems at work. Manual approaches work, but they’re a nightmare when you’re handling calendars for whole teams.
I created an automation that pulls cultural observances from various sources and syncs them automatically. Takes 5 minutes to set up, then it’s hands-off.
It grabs data from government calendars, cultural orgs, and diversity databases, then creates proper calendar events with descriptions and categories. Runs monthly so new observances get added without you lifting a finger.
You can customize it too - only heritage months, regional observances based on location, whatever you need. Beats hunting down ics files every year or missing important dates.
Works with Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar - handles all the formatting differences automatically.
Same thing happened to me during planning season - my calendar was missing tons of observances we usually acknowledge. It’s not just mobile apps either. Desktop clients have cut way back on cultural observances over the last couple years.
I reached out to our local cultural center and they had exactly what I needed - a digital calendar made for community organizations. Most cities have something similar through diversity offices or cultural councils. They’re way more thorough than corporate calendars and actually include regional stuff that mainstream ones skip.
You could also check professional organizations in your field. A lot of them keep diversity calendars for workplace observances. Universities publish great calendar resources too - they go beyond the basic heritage months and cover significant cultural dates year-round.
ugh, so annoying! My work calendar looks completely empty without these dates. i manually created them but what a pain. try googling “diversity calendar 2024” - found some solid ics files that way. also check if your company has one internally. most HR depts keep these now.
Last year, I faced a similar issue while organizing events for work, as important cultural observances disappeared from my calendar without any notice. I found a solution by downloading the multicultural calendar from the Smithsonian Institution; it offers a thorough list of significant cultural observances and heritage months that are compatible with Outlook, Apple Calendar, and other platforms. Since they update it annually, it saves hassle. Additionally, many universities have public diversity calendar feeds that are very detailed, which can be a better option than relying solely on what tech companies choose to display.