Special Occasions Are Magic

The only time he's really seen, is once a year on Halloween.

— Songdrops, "My Pet Monster"

The world would probably be a lot more boring without special occasions. Times like birthdays, Halloween, Christmas, Easter, that kind of thing. In fiction, special occasions may be even more exciting — maybe Special Occasions Are Magic!

On Christmas, maybe time slows down to allow Santa Claus to deliver all the toys in one night (answering the age-old question How Can Santa Deliver All Those Toys?) or angels might visit, or even the Second Coming may happen. On Halloween, perhaps The Undead rise, or witches arrive. On Valentine's Day, love-related magic may occur. On St. Patrick's Day, leprechauns may appear. On Friday the 13th, Peeve Goblins might start spreading bad luck.

Whether this is good magic, bad magic, both, or neither depends on the work and on the occasion, though there are a few trends. Dark magic is often associated with Friday the 13th, Halloween, or villains' birthdays. Positive magic is usually associated with Christmas (exceptions usually overlap with Twisted Christmas), Easter, Valentine's Day, Hanukkah, and good people's birthdays.

In order to qualify for this trope, then the special occasion must be causing the magic in some way. If magic just coincidentally happens to occur on a special occasion, then it's not this trope.

Can overlap with Christmas Miracle (if it's a literal miracle and not just a stroke of good luck), Angel Unaware, Celestial Deadline, A Birthday, Not a Break, Christmas Episode, Hanukkah Episode, Easter Episode, Birthday Episode, Halloween Episode, Valentine's Day Episode, 13th Birthday Milestone, Superstition Episode (if it's Friday the 13th), or Dangerous 16th Birthday (if the supernatural thing causes something creepy to happen to someone on their birthday) and Becoming the Costume (especially on Halloween). Compare Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday. Sub-trope of Liminal Time.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• In D.N.Angel, Daisuke inherits a magical alter ego known as "Dark" on his 14th birthday and suddenly finds his body physically transformed into Dark's.

Films — Animation

• Annabelle's Wish: Santa Claus visits a farm and gives the animals the ability to speak on Christmas day, which they have to keep secret from humans.
• In the Rankin/Bass Productions cartoon Cricket on the Hearth the hour of Midnight on Christmas Eve allows magical things to happen. Like toys coming to life only to deliver plot exposition and then go away. They have a rule that humans can't see them while animate, but crickets don't count.
• In Wish (2023), when a Rosas inhabitant turns 18, they give their wish away to King Magnifico in a ceremony in the hopes that one day he'll grant it. Every month, he grants one or more wishes to those he thinks deserve it.

Films — Live-Action

• Halloweentown: The portal between the mortal world and Halloweentown only opens when it's Halloween in the mortal world. While a bus exists for beings without magic to ferry them back and forth, witches are also able to magically open portals between the worlds on this night, unless other magic gets in the way. This was eventually averted at the end of Halloweentown II, when Marnie and the others were able to open a permanent gate between realms. In addition, a witch's 13th Halloween was meant to mark the end of her training, while a witch who hadn't learned magic by then would lose her powers for good at this time.
• In Hocus Pocus, the Sanderson sisters may only be summoned on Halloween night (with the additional requirements of it being a full moon and the person who lights the candle being a virgin).
• Liar Liar: On his 5th birthday, Max wishes that his dad couldn't lie. His wish comes true, which the judge notes can happen due to "24-hour curses". At the end of his movie, his parents fear it will happen again when he turns six, implying that this always happens on Max's birthdays.
• The Disney Channel movie 16 Wishes centers around Abby Jensen turning 16 years old and being visited by a Fairy Godmother. She is granted 16 magical candles corresponding to the wishes on her board of goals.

Literature

• The Dark is Rising: The time of the Dark's first Rising occurs from Midwinters Eve to Christmas Day, which just so happens to fall around Will Stanton's 11th birthday, when he comes into his power as an Old One in the first book. The second great Rising occurs at Midsummer, with both of these times said to be naturally ones of great magical power.
• The Dresden Files: Halloween is a time when the mortal and spirit worlds draw close, making the laws of magic malleable; immortals can gain power but are also vulnerable to death. In Cold Days, this time limit becomes the focus of a plot to kill a rogue faerie monarch.
• Hogfather: Death's manservant Albert rarely if ever returns to the real world, because when he does his lifetimer starts trickling again, and as of the end of Soul Music, he only has seconds left. On Hogswatchnight, he helps out with Death Subbing for Santa, explaining that tonight it doesn't apply to him due to the time distortion needed to distribute gifts to all the children in the world.
• Mary Poppins: The first book reveals that animals become anthropomorphic on Mary's birthday, but only if it falls on a full moon.
• In Savvy, whenever someone belonging to a certain bloodline turns thirteen, they get their "savvy" (that is, their superpower). In fact, the thirteenth birthday of someone in a family with savvies is sometimes known as their "savvy birthday".
• Sword Art Online: During the Aincrad Arc, a unique boss appears during the Christmas event (explicitly stated to be because it's Christmas), rumored to drop an item that can revive players killed in The Most Dangerous Video Game. Kirito goes after it and slays it, hoping to revive members of his former guild who were killed in a dungeon ambush but discovers to his disappointment that the item will only bring back a player whose HP was reduced to zero in the last ten seconds.
• The Tailor of Gloucester: Animals are granted the ability to speak on the night of Christmas Eve through some vaguely-defined magic.
• In The Witch Family, every Halloween, witches have a party called the "Saturnalia". Also, when Old Witch is banished, Amy and Clarissa (the little girls who banished her), say that as long as she doesn't break any rules, her banishment doesn't apply on Halloween.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5: In "Day of the Dead", the Brakiri are given permission to mark off part of the station as a boundary line for their eponymous holiday, when the spirits of the dead are said to come back to the world of the living. This turns out to literally be the case.
• Merlin (2008): "The Darkest Hour" reveals that at the stroke of midnight upon the eve of Samhain (marking the end of the harvest and the lighter half of the year), the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is at its thinnest. As such, it is possible through an Old Religion Human Sacrifice ritual to tear open the veil and unleash the Dorocha upon the world.
• In the Motherland: Fort Salem universe, traditional pagan holidays like Beltane, Samhain, and Yule grant witches more power than usual, allowing them to perform feats beyond their usual power level.
  • In the episode "Hail Beltane", for example, the witch cadets hold an orgy on the titular holiday in order to generate power that the Necromancy cadets then use to interrogate Porter Tippet about his death.
  • In "Happy Yule!", Scylla tries to take advantage of her increased power during the holiday season to try and communicate with Raelle, who's been trapped in the Mycelium.
  • "Brianna's Favorite Pencil" takes place during Samhain, when each coven must defend their hearth until midnight from the ghosts of the Lost Regiment. If they win, they get to talk to one dead witch of their choosing.
• In the Sabrina the Teenage Witch sitcom, Sabrina has her magic powers awakened when she turns 16 years old in the first episode.
• Supernatural: As revealed in "It's The Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester" that quite fittingly it's only possible to summon Samhain, the ancient demon who inspired Halloween through three human sacrifices, one each day with the final upon the last day of the harvest namely Halloween.

Multimedia Franchises

• Touhou Project: The goddess Chimata Tenkyu's "Lunar Rainbow Market", where she personally partakes in the selling of Ability Cards, only occurs during a titular lunar rainbow or similarly dramatic event such as a meteor impact, volcanic eruption, or intersection with an Otherworld.

Music

• Songdrops: In "My Pet Monster", the only time the monster isn't invisible is on Halloween.

Mythology & Religion

• In British folklore, it was long held that Midsummer's Eve (June 24) was the night when the boundaries of life and death were at their thinnest. As such it was believed that the souls of the living could leave their bodies during the night whilst they slept to wander the world and those whom were to die that year would knock upon the nearest church door. Likewise, it was believed that upon Midsummer's eve that the faeries and supernatural creatures were at their most active, with their being many legends of travellers out after sunset encountering many strange beings, some benevolent some malevolent. As such it was traditional starting from the middle ages for great pyres to be built upon Midsummer eve, to burn from sunset to sunrise the next day so that all lost souls would have a guiding light home, as well as to appease all the benevolent creatures and ward off all evil ones.

Tabletop Games

• Warhammer Fantasy: Justified with Geheimnisnacht and Hexensnacht, the nights when the Chaos Moon Morrslieb is closest to the world. Its influence causes Lunacy, Wild Magic, and otherworldly incursions, so holiday observances for the non-Chaos affiliated mostly focus on staying safe indoors and/or protecting themselves from whatever the Chaos affiliated get up to.

Web Animation

• Spooky Month: Played for Laughs. In "Unwanted Guest", Skid and Pump visit the hospital's morgue and cheerfully inform the worker there that it is Spooky Month. The corpses in the morgue then inexplicably rise and begin to dance, only for the morgue worker to inform them that it is actually June, not Spooky Month. They all die (again) on the spot.

Webcomics

• In A-gnosis' comics on Greek myth, the Anthesteria, a three-day festival to Dionysos, upends both the social order and the supernatural, allowing the spirits of the dead to walk the mortal world. It's a huge headache for Hades.
  Hades: Hermes, my role in the cosmos is to make sure that the dead stay where they belong. That the world of the dead and the world of the living don't get mixed up. During the Anthesteria that rule suddenly ceases to exist.

Web Original

• Neopets: During the "Faerie Festival", Marina uses magic to heal all pets that come her way, as opposed to her usual fare of alternating between healing them completely, healing them partially, and giving out items.

Web Videos

• Pop Cross Studios: In this video, Christmas Eve in Dimension D667 is the night that Pogonus (a demonic version of Santa Claus) and his minions attack the sleepy Romanian village of Kraznorasz in search of humans to kill and eat. On that night, Gadgeteer Genius Benny Sharp teams up with the Predator Coalition of Demon Hunters in order to save Christmas from lots and lots of demons.

Western Animation

• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • Every Valentine's Day, Cupid shows up and begins making Earthlings fall in love.
  • Every Friday the 13th, the Anti-Fairies escape to Earth to cause bad luck.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Discussed in "Luna Eclipsed", where the ponies believe that Nightmare Night (which is essentially Halloween but different) is when Nightmare Moon (Princess Luna's evil persona) returns and eats ponies, but it's not true.

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