Topic: The Christian calendar’s other days
Does India have The Christian calendar’s other days?
Not observed here
India's central government holiday list has two tiers. In the 2026 list, only two of the compulsory gazetted holidays are Christian: Good Friday on 3 April and Christmas Day on 25 December. The far broader restricted tier adds Easter Sunday on 5 April and Christmas Eve on 24 December. Ash Wednesday, Ascension, Pentecost and Corpus Christi appear in neither — not even in the restricted tier, which runs to some thirty entries an employee may choose from. That list simultaneously carries Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist days, so the omission is not a matter of the list being short: these particular days simply did not go in.
What is this topic?
Beyond Christmas and Easter, the same Easter computus produces a whole series of days: Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi. How far a national calendar follows that series varies enormously. Indonesia, with the largest Muslim population in the world, makes both Good Friday and Ascension statutory national holidays and adds a collective leave day after Ascension. Brazil, the largest Catholic country, treats Corpus Christi at federal level as an optional working day, not a statutory holiday — it becomes a real holiday only where a city council has legislated one. The United States federal list of eleven holidays contains exactly one Christian day, Christmas. Pentecost appears nowhere: it always falls on a Sunday.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.