Surprisingly there is no simple switch to flick on your iOS device or Mac that auto-adds holidays to the Calendar app. That however doesn’t mean that there isn’t a free and simple solution.
I couple of years ago I actually spent money on an app from the App Store to import calendars to my Calendar app. Granted it was only $0.99, but still, I could be $0.99 richer right now. That being said, I’ve decided to pass on this little tip to all of you, not only to save you a bit of spare change but because a Calendar just isn’t complete until you add the Holidays to it.
Finding the Holidays to Add
First off, a little explanation on how this works and what’s involved.
Through this process what you’ll be doing is subscribing to an auto-updating list of Holidays. However, your calendar would quickly get cluttered if you added every holiday that is celebrated on this here planet of ours. So we just want to add the Holiday lists that we would actually use.
The subscribable lists are provided by Apple. You can find them here: iCal Calendars from Apple
Once you’ve found the Holiday list you want to add, click the download button. The resulting link that Calendar uses to subscribe will look something like this:
webcal://files.apple.com/calendars/Canadian32Holidays.ics
You don’t really need to worry about this URL/file as it will automatically be picked up by the Calendar app.
Subscribe to Holidays on iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod) or Mac OS X

You can be either using a Mac or an iPhone, iPod or iPad.
On a Mac if you click the download link it will open the Calendar app and show a screen like the above. All you need to do to add and sync the list across all your Apple devices is click the “Subscribe” button.
On an iOS device it’s almost the same process. Click the download button and instead of the Calendars app showing up it’ll just pop-up a little message asking if you’d like to subscribe. Just tap the “Subscribe” button.
If you use iCloud to sync your Calendar events across all your Apple devices then there is not need to do this on every device.
Awesome. This worked perfectly. Thanks man
Don’t know if it’s just me but the Canadian Holiday calendar no longer seems to work after iOS 7 upgrade. I can susbscribe to the US one just fine but the Canada one doesn’t load anything to my calendar at all
I’m sorry to hear you’re having problems getting the Canadian Holidays list. I just tried it again on my iPad (with iOS 7) as well as my Mac (with Mavericks) and both times it worked fine for me. I even removed the copy I already had and tried it again, it worked for me that time as well.
It may have just been a temporarily issue with the servers.
Alternatively, take a look at this other large resource of iCal Calendars: http://www.icalshare.com
Just tried this on iOS 8.1 on iPhone 6 and it worked perfectly! This is just what I have been searching for, thank you!
Thank you for this tip. I lost my US holidays with the ios7 update and your tip worked perfectly and easily!
Thank you so much. it worked for me. I followed your steps. I subscribed a new calendar. the new holidays perfectly were synced across all my iOS devices and my mac.
(i’m on Mountain Lion and iOS 7).
Indian holidays not available only 2009-2012 are available on your suggested link
I have Yosemite on my iMac and an iPhone 4. the uk holiday is on on calendars on my Mac but does not show on my phone
Awesome! Thanks
I lost my Jewish Calder even though it claims it is on.