Users have expressed frustration after noticing that Google Calendar has removed cultural holidays and events such as Black History Month, Pride Month, and others.
Several significant observances, including Women’s History Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, National Hispanic Heritage Month, and Indigenous Peoples’ Month, were also eliminated from the platform. The change has led to widespread concern, with many users voicing their disappointment on social media.
Amid the backlash, Google confirmed that the update took effect in mid-2024. The company stated that users can still manually add cultural and historical events but clarified that Google Calendar will now only display “public holidays and national observances.”
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“For over a decade, we’ve worked with timeanddate.com to display public holidays and national observances in Google Calendar,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “Several years ago, the Calendar team began manually adding a broader range of cultural moments across multiple countries.”
However, the spokesperson explained that maintaining these additional observances became unsustainable:
“We received feedback that some events and countries were missing, and manually maintaining hundreds of cultural moments globally was neither scalable nor consistent. So in mid-2024, we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com while allowing users to add other important moments themselves.”
This decision comes as Google scales back its diversity hiring and promotion initiatives, citing court rulings, executive orders, and its obligations as a federal contractor. The move follows broader national debates over diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
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Despite removing these cultural observances from Google Calendar, the company emphasized that it continues to recognize and celebrate Black History Month and Lunar New Year through other initiatives.
Many users, however, remain unconvinced. One frustrated individual wrote on Google’s support forum: “This is shameful. Reinstate these calendar dates!!!” Another user criticized the move on social media, saying, “These bootlickers have immediately shown us who they are.”
Some believe the change was politically motivated. “With everything happening in this country, this is a slap in the face to Black and LGBTQ+ communities,” one person wrote on X.
