How Do We Decide What Day Easter Will Fall On?

The answer is simple, but the reasons behind the answer are complex. The date is determined by a combination of events centred around the lunar cycle, the solar cycle, the division of each year into 365 days and a 1,700 year old Church ruling.

The explanation starts with the fact that early Christians elected to link the date of Easter to the Hebrew calendar. The New Testament states that the Resurrection took place on on the first day of the week following passover. Sunday is the first day of a Jewish week, the Passover falls on the day of the first full moon after the spring equinox and the spring equinox can fall on either 20th or 21st March. Chaotic, or what? The result was that different churches ended up celebrating Easter on various different days so to try to clear up the confusion the Roman Emperor Constantine I organised a major summit meeting.

This meeting, the Council of Nicaea in AD325, ruled that Easter shall fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox BUT that it can never fall at the beginning of Passover. This ruling led to a huge expansion of Computus, the astronomical calculation of religious dates, which became quite a growth industry. A big problem soon emerged because the calendar year is 365 days whereas the astronomical year is 365¼ days and the lunar month is 29 days. The problem was, quite simply, how to align the 365 day calendar with two different but fixed other calendars?

In Alexandria they fixed the spring equinox (incorrectly) as 21st March and endeavored to create charts that would predict the date in a future year. Various learned persons wrestled with the problem for the next couple of centuries and one of them, a monk called Cassiodorus, wrote some of the first books on how to calculate Easter. Another, Dionysius Exigenus (or Denis The Little) modified the existing tables and was the person responsible for fixing year 1 as the start of the calendar, not year 0, when he dated the birth of Jesus and invented Anno Domini. It is, therefore, all down to him that the twentyfirst century begins on 1st January 2001 and not 1st January 2000 as most politicians would have had us believe!

The system that was slowly developed throughout the Middle Ages is the base for what we use today. So, for the year 2000, Easter works out to be 23rd April (virtually as late as it can be - the latest being 25th April). This date is arrived at because 20th March was both the spring equinox and a full moon. However, the "official" Church equinox is 21st March so the calculation takes the following full moon, 18th April, as its base so that Easter is the first day of the subsequent week, Sunday 23rd April.

[alex]

Okay so why is Easter next Sunday for Orthodox religions?

[Tonio]

Next question: why did Catholics give up land meat (beef, pork, chicken) on Fridays but not sea meat (fish, crab)? That never made sense to me. If you're going to give up meat for a day, shouldn't it be all meat? My family (Lutherans) followed that custom only on Good Friday, usually eating some variety of canned tuna.

[vraiblonde]

Because "sea meat" aren't real animals.

Meat is (or at least was) the food of the wealthy, and to give it up was to eat the food of the poor, and so to remember one's poverty before God. It is a devotional practice of ancient (Jewish) origin, and not really based in Scripture, except for the ideas in Isaiah 22:13, Daniel 10, etc... Abstaining from meat was a sign of penance or sorrow for sin, but eating it a sign of merriment. The current practices regarding meat in Lent (or any time of year) could change (and they have), because they are not a part of Christian doctrine, but only practices that help us in our faith.

[Tonio]

Originally posted by vraiblonde
Because "sea meat" aren't real animals.

They're not? So why didn't Linda McCartney order a fish sandwich at the local pub? Maybe because the staff used to razz her about her lousy singing.

[vraiblonde]

She didn't eat eggs or drink milk, either, and THEY'RE not animals.

And Kain, that doesn't explain why they still eat seafood. THAT'S the food of the rich.

Originally posted by alex
Okay so why is Easter next Sunday for Orthodox religions?

A bit of a read but informative.

Why do Orthodox Churches celebrate Easter on a different day?

Originally posted by vraiblonde
And Kain, that doesn't explain why they still eat seafood. THAT'S the food of the rich.

I know...seemed kinda funny to me too. I guess times have changed. :razz2:

Originally posted by vraiblonde
She didn't eat eggs or drink milk, either, and THEY'RE not animals.

And Kain, that doesn't explain why they still eat seafood. THAT'S the food of the rich.

Like the Jewish guy said to his new bride on a Saturday night...."fish again?"