In 2006 I had been writing a lot of PHP when I heard of this nice little language from Japan called Ruby. I knew there was a web framework for Ruby but I wasn’t quite ready for that yet. I just wanted to get a handle on the language and see how it felt.

holidays was my “learn Ruby” project. I’m not exactly sure why I chose holidays. I think its because I had heard calculating Easter was kind of weird. I also just like organizing data.

The gem was a fantastic way to get a tour of Ruby, and I’ve rewritten it a few times as I’ve learned other languages, too.

A series of lovely people have maintained holidays since I handed it off in 2012. I’m still stoked when I see it show up in Gemfiles in the wild.