What date will Easter be THIS year?
How many times have you wondered, “Why is Easter always a different Sunday? Why cannot it not be the same date as Christmas?” I look back at pictures of my childhood and see my family in jackets and other times in lighter clothing. I also remember greeting fellow parishioners on Easter Sunday while snow was falling. It can be confusing.
Well, there are moveable feasts in the Christian Church. Some are Pentecost, Good Friday and Easter. Easter is one that will have a different date for each year, it is a Christian holy day that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ as described in the New Testament. Early Christians adopted Sunday as the day to worship God and gather in prayer because the resurrection occurred on a Sunday. In addition, there is a whole history on what calendar is used for the Western and Eastern Hemisphere. Many of use will use a google calendar, planner, even a wall calendar to record special occasions or note appointments to attend. The Gregorian calendar is used to find the Easter date. The history of the Gregorian calendar stems from the use of the Roman (solar) calendar rather than the Jewish (lunar) calendar.
There is a computation or computus, in Latin, to determine the date Easter will be for each calendar year. This was decided in 325 when the Council of Nicaea decreed that Easter should be observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox (March 21). This indicated the earliest this moveable feast could be celebrated would be March 22 and the latest could be April 25. Easter as early as March 22 is very rare. The last time it happened was 1818, and the next time will be 2285.
Christian Easter NEVER falls on the same day, year to year, on any calendar, Gregorian or Hebrew. In fact, Catholic/Protestant/Evangelical Easter rarely if ever falls on the same calendar day as Eastern Orthodox/Russian Orthodox Easter. The two Christian traditions have different calculation methods for Easter. Without going into all of the details for why Western and Eastern Christians have different dates for Easter. During the 16 th century Renaissance in Western Europe, progress was made on refining the accuracy of the calendar – for example, this was when the leap year was established – and the previous Roman calendar, known as the Julian after Julius Caesar, was replaced by Pope Gregory XIII in favor of the Gregorian calendar; the one we use today. This change did not affect Eastern Christianity, whose liturgical calendar remains Julian rather than Gregorian. But this subtle refining of calendars would not have been enough to alter significantly the dates for Easter between East and West.
https://www.sjs.edu/blog/passover-and-easters-why-arent-they-always-the-same
Now, hopefully this was not too much to consume at one time. Perhaps you may be inspired to learn when Easter Sunday will fall in future years. To practice this search your wall calendar, internet or other resources at your hand for the moon cycle. Try it and see when Easter will be in 2025 or the year of your birth, or someone close to you.
