Graffiti News

Holiday's Restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan, now has a 70-foot-wide mural on its back wall that walks viewers through a full year of holidays. According to MLive's report of October 11, 2026, by photographer and writer Jacob Hamilton, the restaurant recently commissioned the mural to match its holiday theme.

The Holiday's Restaurant mural shows a year of special occasions

The mural presents a year's worth of holidays arranged across the four seasons. MLive reports that when you look at the back of the restaurant from the parking lot, winter begins on the left, and the painting moves on through spring, summer and fall. The effect is something like a wall calendar laid out on its side.

Holiday's Restaurant sits at 2080 W. Stadium Blvd. The family-owned diner is known for comfort food, including scratch-made corned beef hash, a long sandwich menu and a range of pies. It is open 365 days a year and uses the slogan "Where every day is a celebration." The new mural puts that slogan into pictures.

Each season of the mural carries its own holidays

Every season on the wall is built from a handful of objects that stand for American holidays and seasonal moments. MLive describes the four sections this way:

• Winter (left side): a snowman, a Christmas tree, a tree covered in hearts for Valentine's Day, a groundhog in a top hat, and fireworks overhead marking the New Year.
• Spring: a leprechaun with a rainbow, two Easter bunnies, a Mother's Day card, and a solemn monument for Memorial Day.
• Summer: Fourth of July fireworks, a lush green tree, and an orange traffic cone. MLive notes that the cone stands for "construction season," which it calls every Michigander's bane.
• Fall: a shift into deep orange tones, with autumn leaves, a jack-o'-lantern, a combat boot for Veterans Day, and a turkey in silhouette for Thanksgiving.

The mix is worth noticing. Alongside the national holidays, the painters included a local joke that anyone who drives Michigan roads in summer will recognize.

Elsa Olander and Angeline Miller painted the mural

The mural is the work of two artists. According to MLive, Elsa Olander, a graduate of the University of Michigan's Stamps School of Art & Design, worked with Angeline Miller, a student at the College for Creative Studies, to create the 70-foot-wide piece.

Holiday's Restaurant is marking 30 years on Ann Arbor's West Side

The mural arrives as the restaurant celebrates three decades in business. MLive reports that husband and wife Rob and Jennifer Terbush have owned Holiday's since it opened in 1996 and are celebrating 30 years serving Ann Arbor's West Side. MLive readers named Holiday's Restaurant one of Michigan's Best Diners in 2019.

For a restaurant whose identity rests on treating every day as a celebration, a holiday mural that cycles through the whole calendar is a direct extension of the brand.

Commissioned restaurant murals are a familiar form of public art

A mural commissioned by a local business is one of the most common ways people meet public art in daily life. Nobody needs to visit a gallery: the work is there when you park, walk past or wait for a table. For the business, a mural tells passers-by what kind of place it is before they step inside. For artists, legal commissioned walls offer the chance to work at a large scale.

Themes that everyone already knows, such as seasons and holidays, make a mural easy to read for viewers of any age. Children can hunt for the snowman and the bunnies; adults can catch the regional humor in the construction cone. Walls like this are also easy to photograph and share, which is how many neighborhood murals become small local landmarks.

How to look at the mural if you visit

The best spot to see the mural is the parking lot behind the restaurant. Start at the left edge with winter and walk to the right to follow the year in order. Pay attention to how the color changes from season to season, especially the rich orange of the fall section. It is also worth tracking how the artists reduced each holiday to a single object, such as a card, a boot or a cone.

You can look up this Ann Arbor mural and others around the world on the Wallscape map, and browse photos shared by other street-art fans in the feed. If you photograph the Holiday's Restaurant mural, the feed is a good place to post it.

Source: MLive, "New holiday-themed mural brightens classic Ann Arbor diner"