Sunday, January 17, 2016
Should Easter be on the same Sunday each year?
As a politician, there is nothing more frustrating than the fact that Easter falls on a different weekend each year. It makes planning election activity much more difficult as you have to account for the bank holidays at different points in the campaign every time.
To be honest, I have never been sure how the date for Easter Sunday is worked out. I knew it had something to do with the moon but that was it. Many Christian holy days appropriated pagan festivals as a means of ensuring a less troublesome conversion but I am told that in the case of Easter it is linked to the Jewish Passover.
In fact, and as the Telegraph relates, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox around March 21. This means it can fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25.
Clearly the needs of schools and businesses as well as the woes of politicians should be taken into account when deciding the appropriate date for Easter, whatever its provenance.
All we need to do now is to get all the Christian churches across the world operating on the same calendar system and we will be away. I suspect that may be more difficult as the Eastern Orthodox Church still use the Julian Calendar to calculate their moveable feast days.
Update: As the comment below makes clear Easter is not based on a pagan festival at all but is linked to Passover. As such I have corrected and revised the post above.
To be honest, I have never been sure how the date for Easter Sunday is worked out. I knew it had something to do with the moon but that was it. Many Christian holy days appropriated pagan festivals as a means of ensuring a less troublesome conversion but I am told that in the case of Easter it is linked to the Jewish Passover.
In fact, and as the Telegraph relates, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox around March 21. This means it can fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25.
Clearly the needs of schools and businesses as well as the woes of politicians should be taken into account when deciding the appropriate date for Easter, whatever its provenance.
All we need to do now is to get all the Christian churches across the world operating on the same calendar system and we will be away. I suspect that may be more difficult as the Eastern Orthodox Church still use the Julian Calendar to calculate their moveable feast days.
Update: As the comment below makes clear Easter is not based on a pagan festival at all but is linked to Passover. As such I have corrected and revised the post above.
Comments:
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It's not based on "a pagan festival" - it's based on the Jewish feast of Passover!
# posted by 
: 12:23 PM
: 12:23 PM
"As a politician, there is nothing more frustrating than the fact that Easter falls on a different weekend each year."
Really?
Really?
Absolutely. It plays havoc with my diary :)
Of course there are plenty more frustrations as well but I put those down to other causes.
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Of course there are plenty more frustrations as well but I put those down to other causes.
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