The Diocesan Dialogue
Current Issue
March 2008

Why is Easter so early this year?

Some of our churches in the northern part of the diocese might be worrying that the annual parish lawn Easter egg hunt will compete with the youth group snowman building contest. It’s because the year of the long cold snowy winter is also the year of one of the earliest Easters ever—March 23rd. In fact, Easter cannot occur earlier than March 22nd under a complex formula used to determine Easter Day each year.

The date moves from year to year and the determination of that date goes back to the First Council of Nicaea (which also gave us the Creed). This was based on the Julian Calendar (established by Julius Caesar).

The Eastern Churches still use the Julian Calendar for Easter, but the western churches followed Pope Gregory, who also gave us Leap Year. The extra day and a new calendar (the Gregorian Calendar) went into effect in 1582 and our church (along with the Roman Catholics and most Protestants) uses that to determine Easter.

Now, the formula gets complicated. Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs closest to (but after) the vernal equinox. But— not quite. This is not the astronomical full moon. It is what’s known as an ecclesiastical full moon. The ecclesiastical full moon is the 14th day after the new moon. And the vernal equinox shouldn’t be confused with the equinox in Vernal, rather when the equinox is in Jerusalem. All this fell into place this year to make Easter on March 23rd. Next year, it is back to a little more traditional April 4th.

This is the reason it is just easier to look at a calendar.

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