Why does Easter fall on a different Sunday every year? Something I've always wanted to know, but was too lazy to research. I was a bit surprised to discover my priest didn't know either. Considering the answer, his ignorance is forgivable.
The answer is surprisingly pagan.
3 comments:
Actually, it's Jewish. The Jews use a luni-solar calendar (a lunar calendar that corrects for the solar year so the months don't march backwards around the year as they do in a pure lunar calendar such as Muslims use). Passover is set by this luni-solar calendar to begin on the 14th of Nisan. There were a couple problems with this - first, that there was no mass communication and that the beginning of the lunar month was typically decided by the Jewish religious leaders actually SEEING the moon (which is how Muslims still do it today); and second, that Jews were busy being dispersed from Israel by the Romans and so weren't doing so well with helpfully keeping their calendar up for use by Christians who based their Easter off Passover.
So the long and the short of it is that the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox puts Easter during Passover and means Christians can calculate it on their own when there are no calendar-making rabbis handy to find Passover for us ... if we're all (Christians and Jews) using the same lunar and solar calendars. Some Christians still use the Julian calendar, which is about 10 days off the Gregorian, and their Easter always falls after Passover. The new full moon can also appear on different nights in different parts of the world, which can (very rarely) create a problem for what Sunday Easter lands on.
Western Christians - Protestants, Catholics, Anglicans - basically share a calendar now by common consent and we use astronomical data from scientists to decide when the equinox and moons are, so Easter is pretty easy to locate these days. But it was the cause of a variety of nasty, nasty fights during the history of Christianity because it's really just not a foolproof system, particularly in eras when astronomy wasn't very sophisticated.
Wow. Now THAT's an explanation. I humbly bow to your way superior dorkiness. Eyebrows, when I grow up, I hope I can be half the dork that you are :)
It's just so rare my masters in theology is even remotely useful. I have to whip it out hardcore when it's even TANGENTIALLY caled for! ;)
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