Calendar app

Have you tried Evernote, it's more than a calendar, it's a fully featured app yet simple and user friendly:

"Evernote turns your Android device into an extension of your brain.
★ New York Times

 

Try the 'GO Calendar Widget'. This widget alerts about your friends birthdays and important event that you wish to do at a particular date and time.

 

colorNote and jorte are my Favs give them a look i use them booth for the same reasons you mention.

 

I prefer aCalendar over Jorte. it looks prettier and the navigation is more intuitive for me. It doesn't handle tasks but I prefer Astrid to handle tasks for me.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.withouthat.acalendar&feature=search_result

Jorte is nice in the way it can handle your Task to-do and Calendar at the same time syncing both to Google though.

 

I use Calendroid

 

If you share, I highly recommend Cozi.

 

I use Google Calendar, from my Gmail acct. I have created 9 different calendars. When I create a new event, I choose which calendar it should be on and that's it. I have all calendars to sync with the stock Calendar app. (It works really well.) You can choose which events to show from which calendar. So in your case, I would create a birthday calendar and work calendar. Once you have it set up, its really easy to use. These are some of my calendars: work, personal, church, bills, etc. I hope this helps.

 

Which basically means, you are using the stock calendar. I have Google syncing to aCalendar because the interface is better.