See also Christmas Special, Easter Special, and Halloween Special. Compare to Holiday Mode for videogames, in which certain holiday themed features are activated during the holidays. Contrast Out of Holiday Episode, which is this but released in a different date than the celebrated holiday.
Subtropes:
- April Fools' Plot: Celebrated worldwide on April 1st. Expect plots with Comedy Tropes, usually good-natured pranks, but may be an opportunity to get revenge on the Jerkass.
- Christmas Episode: Celebrated worldwide on December 25th. Expect the use of Christmas Tropes.
- Easter Episode: Usually celebrated in March or April. Expect the appearance of the Easter Bunny.
- Earth Day Episode: Celebrated on April 22nd. Usually comes with a Green Aesop.
- Festival Episode: Observed in Japan on various dates.
- Founding Day: A celebration of when a country or organization was founded. Includes Independence Day, celebrated in the United States on July 4th.
- Halloween Episode: Celebrated October 31st. Expect plots dealing with finding a costume and going trick-or-treating.
- Hanukkah Episode: A Jewish holiday celebrated between November and December, which lasts for 8 days and nights.
- New Year Has Come: Celebration of the beginning of a New Year.
- St. Patrick's Day Episode: Celebrated mostly in Ireland and the U.S. on March 17. Expect leprechauns, their pots of gold, rainbows, a copious amount of the color green, and (in more adult works) tons of drinking.
- Thanksgiving Episode: A holiday of American origin that's typically celebrated in November (or October in Canada), emphasizing food, thankfulness, and often American football. Closely resembling harvest festivals found in other cultures.
- Valentine's Day Episode: Celebrated on February 14th worldwide. Japan & South Korea have a similar holiday, White Day, celebrated on March 14th. Expect plots with Love Tropes.
Examples:
Examples on this page should only be listed if they do not fall under one of the subtropes listed above. open/close all folders
Asian Animation
- Chhota Bheem: Indian holidays such as Holi and Diwali are celebrated in the series.
- The Keymon Ache episode "Holi War" has the characters celebrate the Indian festival of Holi by fighting each other with Water Guns and Balloons filled with colored water.
- Several Motu Patlu episodes have the characters celebrate the festivals of Holi and Diwali.
- There is an episode of Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf where the characters celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.
- Pleasant Goat Fun Class: Travel Around the World episode 23 is about the goats travelling to Thailand and learning about Songkran, the Thai New Year holiday, as well as the festival associated with it that involves splashing water on others to represent blessings.
- Upin & Ipin:
- With the exceptions of the first two seasons (only because they're entirely themed around a holiday), every season has Holiday Episodes dedicated to celebrating Ramadhan month and Eid al-Fitr (one episode each).
- Season 11 has "Pesta Cahaya" where the characters celebrate Diwali.
Fan Works
- Harvey Girls Forever Fanon:
- In "Asiamania", the girls go to China for a Chinese New Year party.
- "Harveyween", "Scare Bud" and "All Harvey's Eve" are the three canon Halloween episodes, but come to think of it, there are many more Halloween episodes that are fanmade.
Live-Action TV
- Married... with Children had two episodes devoted to Labor Day:
- "Hot Off the Grill" has Al holding a Labor Day barbecue, where Kelly inadvertently uses the ashes of Marcy's dead aunt to cook the burgers.
- "We'll Follow the Sun" has the Bundys taking a trip for Labor Day and getting stuck in horrible traffic.
- In a TV segment featured in one episode of Teletubbies, three young siblings invite viewers to come see their mandir and watch as they celebrate Diwali just before their feast.
- The Eerie, Indiana episode "The Lost Hour" focuses on Daylight Savings when Marshall sets his watch forward an hour despite town rules.
- M*A*S*H has an episode where the personnel stationed at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital celebrate Boxing Day by swapping roles.
- Mimpi Metropolitan: The third episode is aired on Eid al-Adha and revolves around the characters getting ready then celebrating it.
- Flodder: The TV series had several, including Christmas, Sinterklaas, April Fools, and New Year's Eve.
- There are several episodes of Baal Veer where the characters celebrate Holi.
- The Two Doors Down episode "Burns Supper" is, as the title suggests, a Burns Night episode. There were also two Christmas epsiodes.
- The 1998 series of The Worst Witch featured a Millenium themed episode as the finale of the second season. Cackle's Academy celebrates the castle's thousand-year history. Then a former student turned pop star Amanda Honeydew is revealed as a special guest with the intention of buying the castle for herself and Mr. Hallow opting to move and modernize the school. This causes Miss Hardbroom to resign and when Mildred hears of this plan, she concocts a scheme with her friends (and her rivals) to put Amanda off. After the usual magical mishaps of the show, Amanda still buys the castle but returns ownership to Miss Cackle, resulting in Miss Hardbroom rescinding her resignation.
- Nightwatch (2015): S2 E1 is set on Mardi Gras, which is huge in New Orleans; all of the cast members have to work extra shifts to keep up.
Podcasts
- Unwell Podcast has two in its second season - 'The Graveyard Shuffle' for Halloween, and 'The Broken Moat' for Thanksgiving.
Radio
- Hamish and Dougal had a Burns Night episode, with the central joke being that they have no idea what Burns Night is, and suspect it's been made up by the English.
- The second semi-final of Season 35 of the music quiz Counterpoint was subtly but distinctly an International Women's Day episode (broadcast 7th March, the day before), with Paul Gambicinni commenting on how appropriate it was the three semi-finalists were all women, the first three questions involving the suffragette anthem "March of the Women", the music from Amelia, and a pioneering female director of music, and a category round called "I'm Every Woman".
Video Games
- Unusually, Ensemble Stars! has had some events themed around Easter, despite obviously not being a popular holiday in Japan. The point seems more to have an excuse to place the characters in colourful rabbit-themed outfits (but not yet, somehow, the appropriately named unit Ra*bits) than anything especially complicated. However, it didn't run for the first couple of years, and due to its proximity to many other events (being right after the very important White Day, aka Repayment Festival, and with Reminisence events often occuring not long after Repayfes, and Cherry blossom Viewing also tending to happen around Easter), it's often skipped.
- Life Is Strange 2 is made up entirely of holiday episodes, since each episode takes place on or around a major US holiday. Roads takes places on Halloween, Rules is in the run-up to Christmas, Wastelands is around Valentines Day,note Faith is just after Easter, and Wolves is on the Fourth of July weekend.
- The same concept makes another appearance in the franchise in the Wavelengths DLC for Life Is Strange: True Colors. This bonus chapter has four distinct seasons and references to a celebration in each. The chapter begins with Steph starting her new job at the Haven Springs radio station around the same time as the town's Spring Festival. In the later sections Steph is shown planning and/or performing themed shows for Pride Month in the summer, Halloween in the autumn, and New Year's Eve in the winter.
Web Animation
- SuperThings has a couple episodes themed around Carnival:
- The episode "Carnival In Kaboom City" has a group of villains taking advantage of the costumes the citizens are wearing to blend in and sneak trackers into the heroes' headquarters.
- The episode "Giant Balloons Carnival" features Toxfung infiltrating a parade with toxic spore-filled balloons, while Mushrulz strives to prove himself as a newer member of the heroes.
Western Animation
- Abby Hatcher has an episode where the characters celebrate Lunar New Year and plan a party for Wai Po.
- American Dragon: Jake Long has one for the Lunar New Year - slightly different from Jan 1. Talks about Chinese traditions on the day as well.
- Let's Go Luna! episode "Spring Has Not Sprung" follows the kids as they learn about the Indian festival of Holi while searching for some monkeys who have taken Andy's camera.
- Ni Hao, Kai-Lan has two episodes where they celebrate Chinese holidays, one featuring Chinese New Year and another featuring the Moon Festival.
- The Proud Family has a Kwanzaa special, where the Prouds invite a homeless family to their house and learn about Kwanzaa.
- Regular Show has a Daylight Savings episode called "Saving Time", where Mordecai and Rigby prank the other park attendants by setting all the clocks in the house to the wrong time. They inadvertently cause the park to leave its place on the ground and float to the time zone fitting its incorrect time because of this.
- Rugrats is a rare example of a show with episodes for Jewish Holidays, including one for Passover and one for Hanukkah. They also did an episode on Kwanzaa.
- In the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Opposite Day", Squidward makes up the holiday Opposite Day to convince SpongeBob and Patrick to act normal, but it ultimately backfires.
- Teen Titans Go! has a Daylight Savings episode where the Titans have to save the skipped-over hour from a farmer. Makes Just as Much Sense in Context. Don't ask, we have no idea either
