Can anyone tell me why Easter falls on a different date every year?

[Blondie]

Christmas is always on December 25th, no matter what.

So why is Easter different?

This year it falls on April 11th.

2003 - April 20th

2002 - March 31st

2001 - April 15th

2000 - April 23rd

 

[barrett7890]

complicated but hope this helps

Pope Gregory XIII. Or at least, the calendar to which he gave his name. Easter is an annual festival observed throughout the Christian world. The date for Easter shifts every year within the Gregorian Calendar. The Gregorian Calendar is the standard international calendar for civil use. In addition, it regulates the ceremonial cycle of the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. The current Gregorian ecclesiastical rules that determine the date of Easter trace back to 325 CE at the First Council of Nicaea convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine. At that time the Roman world used the Julian Calendar (put in place by Julius Caesar). The Council decided to keep Easter on a Sunday, the same Sunday throughout the world. To fix incontrovertibly the date for Easter, and to make it determinable indefinitely in advance, the Council constructed special tables to compute the date. These tables were revised in the following few centuries resulting eventually in the tables constructed by the 6th century Abbot of Scythia, Dionysis Exiguus. Nonetheless, different means of calculations continued in use throughout the Christian world. Universal adoption of this Gregorian calendar occurred slowly. By the 1700's, though, most of western Europe had adopted the Gregorian Calendar. The Eastern Christian churches still determine the Easter dates using the older Julian Calendar method. The usual statement, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical Moon. The ecclesiastical rules are: Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox; this particular ecclesiastical full moon is the 14th day of a tabular lunation (new moon); and the vernal equinox is fixed as March 21. resulting in that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25. The Gregorian dates for the ecclesiastical full moon come from the Gregorian tables. Therefore, the civil date of Easter depends upon which tables - Gregorian or pre-Gregorian - are used. The western (Roman Catholic and Protestent) Christian churches use the Gregorian tables; many eastern (Orthodox) Christian churches use the older tables based on the Julian Calendar. There are some anomalies in certain years, but generally it works as outlined.

 

[battricia]

at the risk of being made fun of, i'm going to say because it's always on a sunday, like thanksgiving is never a set date, because it's always a thursday...

tricia.

 

[Blondie]

What did she just say?

Thanks, I understand.....I think!

 

[love the magic]

Here's a link that explains it:


http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/easter.html

 

[Blondie]

Gregorian, full moon, Julian, equinox, etc.

Calendar shmalendar!

Can't they just pick a date and stick with it? Sheesh!

 

[Princess_Aurora]

Easter is changes every year because it's one of those things that came from the old Pagan religion. Pagans celebrate the Spring Equinox and a lot of the Easter traditions come from that, so Easter is celebrated the Sunday after the equinox or somewhere thereabouts.

 

[CamColt]

I like Battricias answer.

According to my perpetual calendar..."Easter falls on the first Sunday following the arbitrary Paschal Full Moon, which does not necessarily coicinde with a real or astronomical full moon. To calculate the Paschal Full Moon, divide the year by 19(preferably in longhand), add 1 to the remainder, and apply this figure to the table below. Easter is the following Sunday after the date in the chart."

1-April 14
2-April 3
3-Mar 23
4-Aprill 11
5-Mar 31
6-April 18
7-April 8
8-Mar 28
9-April 16
10-April5
11-Mar 25
12-April 13
13-April 2
14-Mar 22
15-April10
16-Mar 30
17-April 17
18-April 7
19-Mar 27

 

[Towncrier]

Easter is changes every year because it's one of those things that came from the old Pagan religion.

Wasn't there a thread here on the CB recently that mentioned that a majority of Christian holidays occur at the precise time of ancient Pagan celebrations? I guess that's one way to squash an old religion. Throw a better party on the same day.

Thanks for the explanation(s) about why Easter moves around so much. I doubt that I'll be able to commit that formula to memory, though.

 

[Blondie]

Originally posted by Towncrier
I guess that's one way to squash an old religion. Throw a better party on the same day.

 

[LJC1861]

Easter Sunday is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of Spring.

Linda

 

[Princess_Aurora]

Originally posted by Towncrier
Wasn't there a thread here on the CB recently that mentioned that a majority of Christian holidays occur at the precise time of ancient Pagan celebrations? I guess that's one way to squash an old religion. Throw a better party on the same day.

And that's exactly how the Christian church thought of it too. When they were trying to convert all the Pagans, they thought the easiest way to do it was to make them more comfortable with the new religion by celebrating all the same things. Christmas and Easter are the two biggest examples. Easter even got it's name for the original Pagan name for the holiday, Ostara. All the traditions of Easter come from Ostara too, the Easter Bunny, Easter egg hunts, those were all things done by the Pagans to celebrate the fertile season...Bunnies and Eggs are both symbols of fertility. So if you ever wondered what those things had to do with Easter, there you go.

 

[Michelemouse]

And, unfortunately, Pagan has come to be synonymous with devil-worship, black magic, etc. Actually the Pagans celebrated nature and that's why most of their symbols/holidays relate to nature.

For anyone who's interested in this type of thing check out the book "The Da Vinci Code". It's fiction, but there are lots of interesting tidbits in it.

 

[GailT]

I think it deoends is the Easter bunny is running late. LOL

 

[robinb]

And then there's also Orthodox Easter ...

http://www.smart.net/~mmontes/ortheast.html

Between AD326 and AD1582, Christianity determined Easter using an algorithm approved by a Church Council in AD325, with the equinox defined as March 21. From AD1054 (when the Orthodox and Catholic Churches split) through AD1582 both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches celebrated Easter on the same date, still using the algorithm from AD325. The Julian Calendar was used by the European (and Christan) communities until the Gregorian reform of 1582.
Since AD1582 October (when the Gregorian Calendar was adopted by much of Catholic Europe), the Orthodox Easter usually falls on dates different than the Western Christian Easter, although apparently the Churches are discussing using the same formula to determine Easter - probably a formula different than that currently used by either Church.

The Orthodox Easter is determined in the Julian Calendar. It has been claimed that Orthodox Easter does not fall on the date of Passover (15 Nisan in the Hebrew Calendar), or before it; this is true recently, but using the modern formulae for determining the date of Passover (rules which go back to the fourth century A.D.), one finds that, in fact, Easter occurred on the first day of Passover several times before the year A.D. 1000. From 1900 until 2099 the Eastern Easter will fall one (45.5%), four (4.5%), or five (21.5%) weeks after the Western Easter - and on the same date in 57 (28.5%) of those years. (I've compiled some Tables showing the offsets between Orthodox and Western Easters from 1583 through 3000 that shows this information.)