Bruce, this is a pretty cool idea -- would be great to have holiday dates as reference points (of course, with the option to choose which country's holidays to reference :)

hmmm.. for extra credit points you could generalize it even more.

What if instead of specifically targeting holidays you can subscribe to ical calendars using events on them as reference points. This would get around the whole issue of which country's holidays etc.. So I could say "3 days before Mother's day" referencing something on the U.S. Holiday calendar I might suscribe to, or even '3 days before Dr. Appt' referencing something on my own personal published ical calendar if I subscribe to that.

We've been giving this some thought -- there are definitely some pretty interesting ways we can integrate with calendars.

I too would like a holiday feature, so that I can have holidays in RTM automatically

Sorry to dredge up an old topic but I need to throw a me too in here. It would be very helpful to people in industries such as banking, retail or even clergy where tasks must be completed based around the time of a holiday. For example, if holiday hours need to be posted 2 weeks before a holiday you could set a reminder to be due "2 weeks before AnyHoliday". A priest could set a reminder to write his Easer sermon as "1 week before Easter" set to repeat anually.

I'm in banking and are quite a few things I could use this for since the whole industry practically shuts down for federal holidays.

Thanks
Tom

I agree with the rest. I've only just started using RTM yesterday, and i really like the free flowing way of entering due date.

Almost immediately i tried to enter "easter" and was mildly disappointed.

But hey, you guys still are impressing me, and this thread was very easy to find to add a few cents.

I'm a web app programmer for an ngo, so i really do apprieciate your work. Very clever stuff. Keep up the good work.

Cheers,
Keith Lim

i really hope the simple version of this gets implemented, atleast :)

Yes, but it does need locale support, because things like Mothers/Fathers/Valentines Day are region-specific.

Since most annual holiday dates are derived from a formula, e.g. the Monday following the third Saturday in May (fictitious example), a more powerful (but less user-friendly) feature would be to allow such a formula to be specified for the repeating due date. This can then be extended for other things, e.g. if I can only send a birthday card on Saturday and need to allow 5 days postal time, I could set a 'send card' due date to be the last Saturday before (5 days before birthday)

I think this function would become too complex. As I think it'd become really hard to support all the holidays for all (?) the countries.
How much effort would it be to just check when Mother's Day will be and then set the due date of your task 3 days before.

These handy, we-spare-1-minute-features aren't quite the things the Dev Team should focus on in my opinion.

I wanted to type "Get dad's gift before Father's Day." It would have been good to see that post with a June 17th due date!

I also want this function. We have our regular meeting on Mondays but on the next day when Monday is a national holiday.

Any updates on this?

Would be a handy addition to RTM.

I find myself attempting this several times a year. Due by "Thanksgiving" or "2 weeks before Christmas". Halloween, Easter, Mother's Day, and Father's Day too.

Christmas and Halloween are easy to work around -- they are always the same day, but Thanksgiving, Easter, and the Mother's/Father's Day change every year.

At the very least highlight them in the calendar UI?

I'd also like this.

What to be even more useful would be to define aliases for certain dates. Like ^backtowork or ^davidswedding - something similar to tasks (maybe with smart lists?)