For some reason I’ve been asked several times over the past
couple weeks why this year Greek Easter falls so much later than “western”
Easter. Catholics, Protestants, and
Anglicans will celebrate Easter on March 31st, Greeks and other Eastern
Orthodox observers on May 5th. My simple
answer was that Greeks and others of the Eastern Orthodox faith calculated
their Easter based upon the Julian calendar while Western Christianity used the
(relatively) modern Gregorian calendar.
Blank stares followed, accompanied by, “But why is this year
so different from other years?”
I couldn’t help but wonder why were they asking that
question of the father of a rabbi.
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| First Ecumenical Synod |
Perhaps they knew that before the First Ecumenical Synod (First
Council of Nicaea) in 325 the generally accepted method for determining the
date for Easter (or Pascha) was to ask a Jew in the community when he
celebrated Passover. That’s because, according
to the lunar-based Hebrew Calendar (now into its 5773rd year), the Jewish
Holiday of Passover (or Pesach) was the occasion for the Last Supper, and the only
dispute appeared to be over whether Easter should be celebrated on the Hebrew
calendar’s date of Nisan 14 or the following Sunday.
The First Ecumenical Synod changed all that by calculating
the exact date of Easter based upon the then modern Julian calendar and ruling that
Easter Sunday should fall on the Sunday that followed the first full moon after
the vernal equinox, with the invariable date of the vernal equinox being March
21. If the full moon happened to fall on
a Sunday, Easter was observed the following Sunday.
Even though some in the Church did not agree with that
determination, it became Christianity’s generally accepted method for
calculating the date of Easter and continued to be so for more than five
hundred years after the Great Schism of 1052 separated the Church of the West
to Rome and the Church of the East to Constantinople (Istanbul).
But in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII introduced what is known as
the Gregorian calendar for the express purpose of correctly calculating Easter,
something the Julian calendar was not believed to have achieved. Today, the Gregorian calendar is the world’s
officially accepted civil calendar.
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| Calendar men Julius Caesar and Pope Gregory XIII |
And though the date of Easter remained the same as set in
325—the Sunday following the first full moon after March 21—it was now based
upon the Gregorian calendar’s March 21, one different from March 21 on the
Julian calendar. Add to that an “it’s-all-Greek-to-me”
series of ecclesiastical moon, paschal full moon, astronomical equinox and
fixed equinox calculations and you have a precise explanation for why there are
often differing dates for Easter.
Did you get that?
The simple answer to the question I was asked about Easter
2013 is that, this year, the first full moon after March 21 on the Gregorian
calendar falls before the Julian calendar’s March 21, and therefore the Greeks
must wait until after the next full moon to celebrate their Easter.
And for those still reading, a bonus bit of
information. Based upon our everyday,
Gregorian calendar, Easter for Western Christianity always falls on a Sunday
between March 22 and April 25, and for most of Eastern Orthodoxy on a Sunday
between April 4 and May 8—at least during the 21st Century. And Easter always falls after Passover.
This year Passover is observed between March 25 and April
2. But don’t ask me why. Ask my son.
Jeff—Saturday
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