Holidays
Villages/cities will visually change as holidays based on TES lore come and go. NPCs will also react to these changes by attending various events appropriate for the holiday.
Addons
Optional: SKSE 1.6.5+
SKSE is only needed for the Gear functionality to work and configuration of this mod through SkyUI’s MCM.
Optional: SkyUI 3.0+
Features from this mod can be configured through SkyUI’s MCM.
Overview
Villages/cities will visually change as holidays based on TES lore come and go. NPCs will also react to these changes by attending various events appropriate for the holiday. If you’d like to experience the in-game holidays along with the real world, it is possible force any holiday, any day, for as long as you’d like through the MCM.
Holidays
From festive lanterns to fireworks, a list of currently implemented holidays and their basic effects in-game can be found here. You will be given notice of upcoming holidays through flyers from the courier and/or through a monthly events letter at the bar in each city tavern.
Holiday Gear [SKSE]
NPCs will equip various items depending on the holiday. Currently implemented gear: Saturalia hats during Saturalia, Jester’s Day costumes during Jester’s Day, New Life Bandanas during the New Life Festival, Festival of Lights Candle Lanterns during the Festival of Lights and practice weapons during the Warriors Festival.
Go Celebrate!
A city’s/village’s NPCs will celebrate in temples, shops, inns and/or outside depending on the holiday. Merchants/laborers may retire early in order to attend events. All cities and villages in Skyrim will have NPCs who celebrate provided the settlement has the specific location required for the holiday (e.g. the Mid Year Celebration has NPCs gathering in temples and outside that day. Since Riverwood does not have a temple, Riverwood’s NPCs will only celebrate outside on this holiday). Since this feature may interfere with some NPC quest scenes, you can A. bother them later (let them relax it’s a holiday!) or B. temporarily disable this feature when needed.
Start Date
If starting a new game, you will have the option to manually set (requires SkyUI and SKSE) or randomize the month, day and/or time your adventure begins. Compatible with Alternate Start – Live Another Life, Skyrim Unbound and Random Alternate Start.
Other Notes
A “Festivals of Skyrim” book detailing all non-dynamic holidays in this mod has been added to the book clutter leveled list. It has a low chance of appearing in various locations throughout Skyrim but will be freely given if SkyUI and SKSE are not installed.
Saturalia decorations will appear on Whiterun’s Gildergreen only when it is fully grown and healthy.
“A New Life Carol” book series (5 total) are a Skyrim adaptation of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” by princess_stomper and are more likely to be found during the Saturalia holiday season.
After the Battle of Whiterun, this mod will be disabled until the civil war is completed. However, this can be overridden using the override feature at your own discretion.
All times listed are estimates. NPC travel time should be taken into account.
Using the Wait function to pass time until an event occurs tends to cause NPCs to bunch up in one location. Allowing NPCs to arrive naturally results in a more natural dispersion.
Winterhold does not hold any celebrations.
Compatibility
No NPCs are directly modified making this mod fully compatible with all NPC mods. Since the primary aim of this mod is to make use of the in-game population, it is highly recommended that you install mods which will populate your Skyrim.
NPC AI packages from Wet and Cold, Run For Your Lives and When Vampires Attack will have priority in the event that NPCs seek shelter.
There may be some minor clipping with the decorations if any other mod that modifies cities or villages is installed. Mods that make drastic changes will result in more severe clipping and floating decorations.
A compatibility patch for Open Cities is available. This patch must be placed under “Open Cities Skyrim.esp”. “Holidays.esp” must be placed somewhere before “Open Cities Skyrim.esp”.
Install/Update/Uninstall
Manual: See the manual installation document in the archive.
Mod Managers: Download the files and add to your respective programs.
Steam Workshop: Hit the subscribe button.
This mod automatically refreshes itself with each revision. When updating (manual or mod managers), simply uninstall the previous version and install the updated version.
When uninstalling, make a save with no holidays active and then remove all installed files. Make sure Holidays.esp and .bsa are no longer present in your Data folder.
