Why does Easter move around? The short answer is that the Bible suggests Jesus was resurrected on the third day after Passover, and since Passover moves around, so does Easter.
Slightly longer answer: In 325 AD, the Council of Nicaea decided that the leap months in the Hebrew calendar made it unreliable, so they decreed a new calculation that placed Easter at the same general time but without any reference to Passover: the first full moon of spring. Christians had already decided Easter should be on Sunday, which gives us the modern dating: Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
Fine. But still: why? Wouldn't it make more sense to calculate the date of Passover in the year of the crucifixion, add two days, and then use that going forward? This date is a matter of disputation, but surely some ancient council could have ordered a scholarly investigation and then just decreed something? April 5th seems most likely, and if you insist on Sunday it would be the first Sunday on or after April 5. Easter would still move around a bit, but no more than a holiday affected by the Monday Holiday Bill.
I'm unable to find an explanation for this historical oddity. And odd it is, since calculating the date of Easter and proclaiming it throughout the Roman Empire every year was a real problem for the early church. A fixed date would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.
The origins of the Easter Bunny and Easter eggs are similarly fuzzy. Eggs are part of the Seder plate in Jewish tradition, and the early Christian church may have adopted them thanks to the link between Passover and the resurrection. Alternatively, they originated for unknown reasons in the Middle East and then migrated to Europe. Then again, it might be only that eggs are a sign of spring and fertility and became associated with Easter that way. There's also a theory that they became associated with Easter because they were forbidden during Lent. Take your pick.
The bunny came later. Back in the Dark Ages the Saxons worshipped a fertility goddess named Eostre and called April Eosturmonath. Linguistically, this is where the English word Easter originates. Eoster may have been symbolized by a hare, which then became associated with Easter itself. Or maybe not. In any case, by the Renaissance German Lutherans had adopted a story told to children that the hare laid the eggs, and a nest was needed for them. Thus was born the Easter basket filled with nesting material and colorful eggs. Over time the hare became a rabbit and that's where we are today.
You are a fascinating Human Being, Mr Durm. Than you for this, what fun.
Best Wishes, Happy Easter, Traveller
Forget about all this business with eggs and cute little bunnies. When did the chocolate bunny arise, and, more to the point, just where is mine this year?!?
Fick
Its all about DEI in rabbit world
Oh my, it's the cost of chocolate. Wait until next year or buy them today. Out of season.
Except for the part about the supermarkets dedicating a whole aisle to candy and baskets a month ahead, and half the florists' nook, I think you covered it all.
Any bible scholar can tell you that the only time shepherds tend their flocks at night is during lambing season-in the Middle East, mid to late March. So Christ was born around this time of year.
Everything else is co-opted from paganism and nature worship: the solstice and Saturnalia. But we still do it.
The Church: someone's having fun, shit, steal it.
I'm reminded of a bit about Easter from Bill Hicks (who died just over 30 years ago). "Why not 'Goldfish left Lincoln Logs in your sock drawer'?", he wondered.
Isn't there a story about how rabbits will start frisking about at dawn in meadows around this time of year and at the same time there's a bird that nests on the ground and when people went out to try to catch the rabbits they found these nests with the eggs in them?
Kevin that was très malin (in French pondre means to lay, as in to lay an egg)
+1
I rather like the idea of a movable feast, and if the dates of the feast don't make a lot of sense anymore, so what? It's a religious thing and religious folk are used to some things not making a lot of sense. It shouldn't affect anyone else (except workers in restaurants, perhaps).
But as far as I know, Catholics and (most if not all) non-Catholic Christians celebrate Easter the same Sunday. Why is that? The decisions of ancient leaders of the church still hold for Catholics, but not Protestants, who have freely discarded notions like transubstantiation and vows of poverty and chastity for clergy. (Even ideas like "love your neighbor" get paid lip service at best in some denominations.) If these churches were so eager to break with Rome, you'd think printing a new church calendar would have happened by now.
If you've been paying attention to Trump messaging lately, you might have noticed phrases like "Catholics and Christians" getting a workout. GOP spokespeople have adopted the same phrasing. Maria Bartiromo too.
The point is not that Trumpists are so dumb they don't realize Catholics are Christians too. The point is that they don't include Catholics in their definition of of Christians who matter. If their plans for a theocratic Christian nation of the United States were ever to happen, Catholics would hardly fare better than Jews, atheists, and other heathen. There's a long history there, and now with Trump they believe their visions have a chance to be realized.
It's a funny thing about that "Catholics and Christians" meme.
I grew up in a Jewish tradition. When I went to my friends' churches on occasion, I was struck by the thought that only the Catholics acted like a "real religion." Their clergy wore robes and yarmulkes just like my rabbis. While they prayed, they even had an ornate tallis around their shoulders, just like my rabbis. The priests incanted in a foreign language, just like my rabbis. The liturgy of the services was filled with seemingly endless repetition of significant phrases, just like our Jewish tradition.
The Protestants, OTOH, hardly seemed to be making any such efforts to seem like a serious religion.
Admittedly, it's been a long time since I attended a church service, but Back in the Day, my Evangelical Lutheran church featured ministers in ornate robes, with embroidered scarves, etc. The colors changed with the Holy Seasons. The choir wore nice robes, too. There was a lot of "ritual" and "repetition", particularly in the prayers. The service -- don't be disappointed -- was in English, and there was a long sermon, not just readings out of The Book.
Maybe things have changed markedly since the 1970s. Or maybe you visited different types of churches. Here in the US, it's traditional for any yahoo to proclaim himself a minister and start his own church. No affiliation or qualifications required.
You're right, I did visit different churches. My Christian friends back then were predominantly Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian. It was a long time ago, and I couldn't testify now which of those churches I visited, nor how many times. But I do remember it left a lasting impression.
I attended a Russian Orthodox mass for a friend of mine. It sounded just like the service at an orthodox synagogue. The words were different and in different languages, but the general cadence and tonality was the same.
"But as far as I know, Catholics and (most if not all) non-Catholic Christians celebrate Easter the same Sunday"
Neither Catholics nor non-Catholic Christians celebrate Easter the same Sunday. It is a movable date each year, hence the whole faux outrage of Republicans when Trans Visibility day happened to take place at the same day as Easter Sunday.
The poster meant that Catholics and (most if not all) non-Catholic Christians celebrate Easter on the same Sunday as each other (on any given year). Note that this does not include the Christian Orthodox church.
Note that we have that figured out we can move to cat blogging
My understanding about the timing of Easter as distinct from Passover (Pesach to us members of the tribe) is that the ancient Church Fathers were not happy with Judaizing among their followers, and ensuring the distinction between the 2 festivals was an important part of emphasizing the distinction between the two religions.
Good Friday overlaps with Passover, but not Easter. Moreover, early (and later) Christians took the coincidence of Passover and Easter not as a potential source of any confusion, but as a symbol of Christianity's supercedence of Judaism, which became of course a potent source of antisemitism for centuries.
I remember when I figured out that Pentecost was just Shavuos. Five tables should have been the tip off.
It's fun to call out irrational traditions even when the effect of a change to a rational tradition would have no significant impact on peoples' lives unless, unless, UNLESS (did I remember to mention "unless"?) one is ignoring their personal participation in an irrational tradition that is an imminent threat to the survival of civilization.
Excuse me while I get on my soapbox.
The worship of reason is a fundamentalist ideology. What is rational to me is not what is rational to you is not what is rational in service of our shared interest. What is rational in the next five minutes is not what is rational in the next five years is not what will be rational to our grandchildren or their grandchildren.
Regardless of why so many people are "rational" while irrationally ignoring what interest is being served, we are all victims in that we've all been told by someone in word or in deed: "I'm right, you're wrong, and this conversation is over." It's infuriating to people with agency, but it represents an existential threat to people that have been marginalized.
What happens when someone calls you out as the perpetrator? Do you say, in word or in deed, "I'm right, you're wrong, and this conversation is over" without skipping a beat?
Alternatively, what makes listening to someone you fundamentally disagree with while trying to understand why they think the way they do so unthinkable?
Chris Matthews gets it: https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/-it-s-blasphemy-chris-matthews-reacts-to-trump-comparing-himself-to-jesus-208062533646
Excuse me while I get off my soapbox.
Happy Easter everyone!
I agree that Catholics are not "Christians" to hard shell Protestant types. The truce called to get allies in the anti choice camp could disappear under the right (wrong) circumstances.
I am a bit surprised at the omission of any explanation of why Orthodox (and, I'd guess, Coptic) Christians celebrate Easter on a different date than Catholics and Protestants.
Just ask Pastor Hagee about Catholics and Christianity . . .
Most Eastern churches, as I understand it, haven't adopted the Gregorian calendar that most Western and Central European churches and countries did-- Catholic first, since this was a papal initiative-- starting in the 16C and then at various points afterward. When Britain and the empire made the switch in 1752, the Julian calendar was 11 days behind the Gregorian; now it's 13.
The British Empire switched over by going straight from September 2 to September 14 (so pro tip, be very suspicious of any document dated between September 3rd and 13th in 1752). This change is why we say Washington's birthday is February 22 even though it was the 11th on the calendar officially in effect in 1732. Or really 1731, because that same year 1752 was the first to begin on January 1 instead of March 25th.
Changing over ended an old practice of avoiding confusion by using parallel dates and specifying "old style" or "new style" (which you'll see in a lot of 17C and 18C documents) and of giving dates between January 1 and March 25 with both years. So it wouldn't have been unusual to see February 11, 1731 o.s. or February 22, 1732 n.s.; or (I think) February 11 o.s. 1731/2, since the date is in the ambiguous range.
The mainstream Russian Orthodox church adopted the Gregorian calendars some time ago, but there are still Old Calendrists who insist on using the Julian calendar. There was still a lot of bad blood in NYC some years back. When I first learned this, I was sure it was an April Fool's joke, but the split was real. There's nothing like religion to bring us all together.
It can get really fun if we start looking at the Orthodox churches. The best discussion I've seen so far says that Greek Orthodox and some others retain the Julian calendar for fixed feast days, while another group that includes Ukrainian Orthodox (but it's binding only in Ukraine) have adopted Gregorian dating for the fixed feasts. And I remember a lot of publicity about Christmas being celebrated on December 25 in Ukraine for the first time, in either 2022 or 2023.
But they're apparently all united on Easter having to follow Passover, in order to be true to the Biblical timeline. Since Passover is very late this year, last week of April, Orthodox Easter will be, too-- May 5. So Tom Nichols has a long wait this year until he can roll out his grandmother's lamb recipe.
Can spats within churches be set off by heads sent spinning from calendar confusion?
The correct terms are eastern orthodox and oriental orthodox. The roman catholics and eastern orthodox split from the oriental orthodox in 451AD.
Apparently, the sole source for the existence of Eostre is the Venerable Bede, and that ultimately is the source for Eostara and the rest of the pagan mythology. In other words, there may be nothing there.
Snopes put forth an exhaustive investigation of Easter and its traditions. Check it out!
Thanks for the Snopes link. It's not quite exhaustive, in my opinion, as it makes no mention of Germanic calendars with a month named something like "Eostermonath." That name predated Christianization and must have referred to something, whether a goddess or not. I would bet on Bede myself.
Esoteric
We also get estrus and estrogen from the same root.
Actual, a massive amount of archeological evidence for Eostre has been found in Germany in the last quarter century.
Let me go on a different track here to propose a possible reason why the date of Easter has to depend so much on celestial events, ie spring equinox and full moon. Isn't Easter the observance beyond all others in the Christian calendar of the congruence of the heavens and the earth? Doesn't it commemorate a day-- the day-- when heaven and earth most perfectly aligned? If that's the case, it would stand to reason that even though the celestial bodies are at best only symbols of this alignment, they have to be in their proper positions for the moment to attain and express its full meaning.
Granted this is mystical, but we're talking about religion here, after all.
How could anybody read that history and not say "So....it's all bullshit, then."
So what I don't see here is an answer to the question "Who is the authority on when Easter occurs." It's all very well to describe arcane formulae and history, but when I ask (Google or a pastor friend) when Easter is this year, I'd like to know where they got that information from. What if different people compute it with different answers? Is there some Greenwich-like repository of the official Easter calendar? Should we be relying on the Pope (even for non-Catholics)?
I rely on my Daytimer. It may be right, or perhaps not, but if all my acquaintances use the same date, it's good enough for me.
It's usually the head of the church, so the Pope in the Vatican set Easter for Roman Catholics. I suppose the Jews set Passover based on whatever the king in Jerusalem said, but I assume that they had some way of reaching consensus before the whole kings thing.
If you want an even tougher holiday to forecast, try Ramadan. The religious authorities in Mecca set the date based on the actual sighting of the crescent moon, so the holiday might be delayed depending on atmospheric conditions.
I suspect Easter Sunday is a big "collection" day at the churches. Move easter to another day and attendance might not be too great.
When I was a child in the fifties my siblings and maternal cousins and I made nests outside in the grass the day before Easter. Our Easter baskets would be in our nests next morning. My mother's family was rooted in early California Spanish and Mexican era but I don't know if there's a connection.
Everything in the Christian calendar is based, in part, on pagan festivals/celebrations/observations. Beyond that, does it really matter?
Does anyone actually believe Christ was born in a manger on December 25th?
Why didn't they just use the year that Jesus was crucified? Because it seems early Christian communities didn't really know. The Gospels agree it was sometime during the governorship (or rather prefectureship) of Pontius Pilate in Judea, but that could have been any time between about 26 and 36 AD. The high priesthood of Caiphas spanned an even longer period on either side of those dates (as early as 18 AD to 40-45 AD). The bigger problem is that they didn't know when he was born, either. Mark mentions nothing about Jesus's birth. Luke claims it was during the governorship of Quirinius in Syria, which began in 6 AD, but in the same year when Augustus ordered a census of "the whole world", which never happened (much less requiring everyone to return to some ancestral town to be enrolled, which makes no sense whatsoever). Matthew suggests Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, who infamously tried to kill all the young children in Jerusalem to eliminate any future rivals, but Herod died in what we consider 6 BC.
It was a monk named Dioynisius Exiguus (Denis the Meek) in the 6th century who established the Year of the Incarnation of the Lord (AD) as 525 years prior to his writing using consular tables and the Julian calendar and used this to calculate future dates of Easter. This system was then copied by the Venerable Bede, whence it spread to the rest of Latin Western Europe during the Carolingian Renaissance of the 8th-9th century.
"the Carolingian Renaissance of the 8th-9th century"
Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!
Passover dates are usually determined by the 15th day of the month of Nisan, which is on the first night of a full moon after the Spring equinox. So not that different, really, from the Easter calculation. It's the first full moon + delay until Sunday as needed.
"So not that different, really, from the Easter calculation. " Given that the easter calculation is explicitly the passover calculation modified to move easter to sunday that is not surprising.
Aside from Oester, there is a rich variety of interesting/odd Easter traditions worldwide. It seems mostly an artifact of Christian imperial progress, incorporating local religious traditions to envelope them, in a sort of early incarnation of Microsoft's "embrace, extend, extinguish".
You can sample here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_traditions
I've always found the Easter Bells odd.