Alternatives to tooltips in tablets?

I understand this question has been discussed a couple of times on the site. However, it seems not to be getting the answer or inspiration I am looking for. BTW, my background is a programmer in case I sound too silly.

So let's say we have a web application. The question is, how to convey info that we don't want filling up the screen all the time and yet needs to be available when desired. Hover text was good for that, but only works well when there's a mouse involved. Now we need to support this web application to run reasonably well on a couple of targeted tablets-browser combination (including iPad, Andriod Samsung and more).

To throw a wrench in, sometimes the elements are not only "hover-enabled" to display additional dynamic content, but also clickable to trigger a primary action(such as going to another page). The real estate is very limited, so adding an "info" icon is not an option. The fact that the tooltip content is dynamic also rules out the option of "graph legend".

Here is a concrete user case.

In below screen, there is a calender widget with very limited real estate. The way it works with a mouse is: 1) when mouse-over "11/24/2014", hover text will tell it is thanksgiving and other info.

2) when end user clicks any specific date cell, end user will be navigate to another page.

It works fine with a mouse, but not "touch". What we are hoping for "touch" is:

1) Same codebase, runs well in major browsers in both desktop and major tablets

2) Preserve existing functionality (supplemental info for each date cell, and clickable event on each date cell)

The question becomes, Hypothetically, if we had designed these screens with tablets in mind, what might we have done differently so that we didn't even rely on hover text? Might we have done something that works the same for both touch and mouse? It does not have to be "hover to bring up tooltip", then what options do we have?

EDIT: add another user case that no extra real estate For example, many of the column values can have hover-up to provide supplemental info.