Back in September, I changed desks at work for a couple of months. We all have whiteboards at our cubicles and offices to let people know where we are, and this new desk had an extra-large whiteboard, prominently placed on the outside of the cube. (My current cube has its smaller whiteboard up on a cupboard behind my chair, so it’s not as easy to see.)

I figured I should do something with the whiteboard, so I decided to start doing doodles for all weird, unusual, or just plain cool holidays. For example, this last Saturday, May 25th, was both Geek Pride Day and Towel Day. So sad that I couldn’t do a doodle at work.

After my two months at that desk were up, and I came back to my current desk, the doodles were already popular enough (and I was having enough fun with them) that I knew I’d have to carry on with them. So I got a cool little picture frame (the TOLSBY frame from IKEA, for a whopping 99¢), a package of 4×6 notecards, and some crayons, and carried on with the daily doodles.

Sometime earlier this year I changed from a heavier felt-tip pen to a lighter Flair. And I don’t always color them in; some of the details can be lost if they’re colored in crayon. I’ve kept all of the note cards, and I take a picture of each one. So here are some of my favorites.

The number of holidays I combine depends on how many there are on a given day, and how creative I’m feeling about combining them. So far my record is four holidays in one doodle. It’s kind of surprising how many oddball holidays there are out there. I put my list together from several sources, including BrownieLocks, Holiday Insights, and Days of the Year.

If you’re on the Twitters, I try to post them every work day with the hashtag #weirdholidays. I used to use Instagram to put them up, but since Twitter and Instagram don’t like each other so much anymore, now I use a nice little service called Streamzoo.