These Religions Celebrate the Most Holidays

Somewhere in the world, a meal, ritual, or offering is being prepared in religious observance—most likely by the busy adherents of Roman Catholicism or Hinduism. If Catholics celebrated every saint’s day or Hindus commemorated each deity’s birthday, nearly the entire year would be accounted for.

The Jewish calendar has dozens of holidays—but the Torah only mandates strict observance of the holiest five. Muslims, too, are holiday minimalists. In Islam the biggest celebrations are saved for the last days of its two major holidays: Id al-Fitr for Ramadan, and Id al-Adha to end the hajj pilgrimage.

Compiling a schedule of the holidays most widely observed by the world’s nine largest religions—as seen above—is no simple task. Different countries and regions, as well as denominations, celebrate their own versions of the holidays, and some religions follow a unique calendar. China’s lunar calendar runs on a 60-year cycle; India uses several types of calendars.

“Every year different countries will have a political battle over adding or changing a holiday,” says J. Gordon Melton, a professor of religion at Baylor University and author of the encyclopedic Religious Celebrations.

The establishment of the international date line in 1884 pushed holidays that used to begin at sunset to the next day in many countries. Today holiday scheduling can be influenced by things like economic productivity, which is the reason some celebrations move around each year to bookend a weekend.

The only religious federal holiday in the U.S. is Christmas, while other countries have a more inclusive approach to observance. In multi-theistic India, citizens can choose from a list of Christian, Muslim, Sikh, and Buddhist holidays, in addition to 28 recognized Hindu holidays, to take off. “In the modern mixed religious environment, having holidays recognized by the government is a step toward public acceptance for smaller religious groups,” says Melton.