Holiday 13

First Day of Spring

Vernal equinox

~1 min read · 194 words

When it falls

Vernal equinox (around March 20) — fixed canonical date, ±1 day tolerance.

Worked dates:

Year Date
2026 March 20
2030 March 20
2050 March 20

What it shows on the island

From holidays.yml:

Blossom branch with butterfly.

Sprite

Dimensions: 32 × 32 pixels. Anchored at island position (404, 284).

Added by this port via the holiday expansion. existing_sprite: null. The visual is a 32x32 transparent emblem authored by an AI sub-agent in the shared 16-color CLUT defined in scripts/holidays_art_lib.py. It overlays the island corner during the holiday’s window rather than reskinning the scene.

Palette

 #FFC9D9,  #B8E0A8,  #9AD0E8

Three-color hint from holidays.yml. This is a guide for the codegen step and the emblem authoring pass; the actual emblem samples from the shared 16-color CLUT, and the original Sierra sprites use the original game palette directly.

Algorithm

Returned by holidayVernalEquinox / holidayAutumnalEquinox as a fixed canonical date. See Date-algorithm core.

Emblem

This holiday has an emblem on the shared sheet at cell 8, pixel offset (0, 32). View the packed sheet on GitHub: docs/ps1/holidays-emblems/holiday-emblems-sheet.png. Full index: Emblem gallery.

Source