When Do You Celebrate Easter?

While many around the world are celebrating Easter this weekend, a large number of people will have to wait another week for their celebrations.  In the Orthodox Church Calendar, Easter Sunday 2009 will fall not on April 12th, but on April 19th.  How has this difference arisen?

Image via Wikipedia

Easter celebrations were originally linked to the Jewish festival of Passover which had a fixed date (14th day of Nisan) and therefore took place on a different day each year.  However, early Christians of Gentile origin did not observe the Jewish traditions, and preferred to always celebrate Christ’s resurrection on a Sunday.  This meant that the feast would be on the same day every year, but a different date. 

After years of Easter being celebrated on different days in different parts of the world, the Council of Nicaea in AD325 decided once and for all that Easter would be celebrated each year on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox.

So, why is Easter still celebrated at different times in different parts of the world?

The problem was that the Julian calendar that was then in use didn’t tally with the true astronomical year, gaining a day every 134 years, so fixing the exact date of Easter was increasingly problematic over the centuries and discrepancies arose once more. 

Reform came in the shape of the Gregorian Calendar, which was adopted by most Catholic countries during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.  Protestant countries followed later.  In Britain and the American Colonies, the Gregorian calendar wasn’t adopted until 1752, when Wednesday 2nd September was followed by Thursday 14th September. 

Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1917, after the October Revolution (which actually took place in November, according to the Gregorian calendar!).  All other Eastern Orthodox countries had adopted the new calendar by 1927, but the Eastern Orthodox church had not, and continued to use the Julian calendar to calculate the dates of Easter.  Hence, Orthodox Easter is almost always on a different date to western Easter.

However, many Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas on December 25th, despite their use of the different calendar.  This is because a compromise revised Julian Calendar was proposed in 1923 with separate solar and lunar parts.  The solar part of this calendar allows for Christmas to be celebrated on December 25th Gregorian, while Easter remains a movable feast, linked to the lunar part.  However, some churches refused to accept this new calendar.  Hence, Orthodox churches in Romania, Bulgaria, America, Poland and several other countries celebrate Christmas on December 25th, while in Russia, for example, Christmas day is currently January 7th by the Gregorian Calendar.

But whatever day you celebrate Easter this year, be sure to remember why we even have this holiday.  Why not take time out to think about Jesus Christ who died and rose again on the third day for the salvation of all mankind?

Hristos a inviat.  Adevarat a inviat!