The other day in Was last night Walpurgis [Night|Eve] or May Day Eve?, I showed the following picture of my Outlook calendar:

and specifically mentioned how I was going to have us leave the Queen aside for the moment.

Reader Bart Samwel commented on the mess here that I was momentarily not stepping in here:

Still, the Queen's Birthday is not correct either. The official name of the holiday is "Koninginnedag", which means "Queen's Day", nothing more. And it's actually not the current queen's birthday, because the current queen was born on January 31st. It is the *previous* queen's birthday though. It was probably retained on April 30 because January 31 is not really a good time to hold flea markets, and run around the streets all night partying. (It will become really interesting when the crown prince Willem Alexander takes over. His birthday is pretty early in the year as well, so it'll probably stay on the same day, but be called "King's Day" or something.)

Interestingly, Queen's Day is also renowned for Queen's Night (which Outlook would probably describe as Queen's Day's Eve :-) ), which is a whole night of outside partying, with open-air concerts and the whole shebang. Does Outlook show that one as well?

Bart is 100% right here -- the holiday is Koninginnedag -- Queen's Day.

It was indeed held on the actual birthday of Queen Juliana, but when her daughter (Queen Beatrix) ascended to the throne the day was kept the same, for several good reason such as the ones Bart points out, and officially it was kept unchanged as a tribute to her mother (ref: here, in Dutch if you can read the gist, I got that from the Wikipedia article!).

Since this all happened back in 1980 on Queen Juliana's birthday (and thus the last time that Koninginnedag was the reigning Queen's birthday), before Outlook or indeed even any currently supported version of Windows or Office or Outlook existed, I can't think of any good reason for it to be called Queen's Birthday anymore, really.

Therefore, unlike the Sovereignty Day/Montenegro/Yugoslavia debacle I mentioned previously, and quite like like 80's commercial with schoolchildren being asked how the filling got in the Twinkie, this problem was just born there in Outlook....

Though it is my hope that the Dutch localized version of Office addresses this problem and calls it Koninginnedag as it should, although the localization story for holidays in Outlook has had a not always impressive face historically. So it is fervent hope with minimal optimism. :-)

 

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