I recall last year with lockboxes becoming presents that you could unwrap for Christmas and the thought just popped into my mind. What it would be is areas that unlock based on the time of the year that has unique EQ to each area and can only be obtained in that time frame and no others. Essentially each Holiday would have its own area with a quest or multiple quests, that give a variety of rewards to those players who complete them. Since it would be locked at all times with the exception of it coming up to that holiday, the way the EQ there would be able to circulate is through PK. This gives players who enjoy PK a chance to keep those items in circulation until either someone gets purged or it comes about again the following year. Some of them could even be exact duplicates of other items in the game just with different names so that if certain things are not about, these are optional if you can complete the areas in the time frame. That would mean since no one plays mages much anymore, the Ring of Accuracy could potentially be a duplicate, or an antievil ring similar to that of the dragonscale ring from Blood.
Since we have different Holidays around the world, we'd pretty much have the main common Holidays seen throughout the world even if they're not celebrated exactly the same. So for instance, Christmas would be viable. You can gain presents only in this area and no where else in the game that could be unwrapped at any point of the year so you don't find out that once they were removed, you can no longer unwrap them once the time limit ran out on the area. If you didn't already know, if you still have characters with presents, you can't unwrap them and haven't been able to do so since they were changed back. Not all things inside would be good though. I'd suggest in this case a naughty/nice list be taken nearly literal into the game, but for inside these presents. You could be opening up a present and find a really nice weapon or piece of armor, but you could also find a sweet weapon that seems great, but the second you start using it for fights, you may find out that sweet weapon berates you verbally and abuses you physically. This could be a build up of pain like that of the Mysterum and their shield to lower damage, but at the tail end drops you to 1hp. It wouldn't hit you that hard, but the harder you hit the enemy the more powerful the blade may strike you. Or perhaps it will somehow melt during your battle with someone so you're left with fighting them using just your fists.
Each new area would have a twist with added variations to fit the lore of varying countries. A built in moral system could be used as well for the end game boss of the Christmas area so if you're naughty you've got to beat up Santa. If you're nice, you face Krampus so you can free Santa from his prison cell he got tossed into. You may find yourself in an enclosed place where you have to take on the Yule Lads. They may ask you various riddles in which you have to get at least 75% correct or the door to push forward onto the final leg of the area will remain sealed until the next shift hits. This will at least allow you to get back out without worries or recall. At the beginning we could see Rupert carrying around a whip and can go off on a tangent at the beginning forcing the idea of being nice is better than being naughty.
I think it could add a bit of flare to the game as all of the current end game areas are navigated quite easily by many players already. The limited time runs would possibly make it so that many players could still enjoy going to them due to the mystery of it all. It would encourage grouping up and the sharing of knowledge as a whole, while also offering alternatives with EQ. It could even be made so that you get an owner only item for completion instead of the alternative EQ, which I'd suggest a ring since the good ones aren't ever really about due to the melee craze. Any thoughts to it?