Whenever two or three Christians are gathered together they ask - when is Easter this year? The church year would be oh so simple if it weren’t for Easter (although, of course, there wouldn't be a church if it wasn't for Easter). As everyone inside or outside the church is aware, Easter jumps about apparently randomly in March and April, dragging all its associated dates with it – Lent with its feasting (Pancake Day, Mardi Gras etc.) and fasting, Ascension, Pentecost. It's not just in Churches that this matters - many schools base their terms around Easter because it has associated public holidays. So, when is Easter this year?
When are the next few Easters?
Rather than list dates here which will be out of date in a few months, I've created a computer-generated table which should be perpetually current. Click the link below.
Why does Easter move?
The early church celebrated Easter at the Hebrew Passover (which is based on the spring equinox and the full moon) and wanted to maintain the link, but as time passed and the church spread it became useful to have an independent way of calculating, well in advance, the date of Easter in any year, so the church standardised on a calculation which basically amounts to this:
Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon on or after 21 March
So what dates can Easter fall on?
The earliest possible date for Easter using these computations is 22 March, which last happened in 1818 and will not happen again until 2285. The latest possible date is April 25, which last happened in 1943 and won't happen again until 2038
How this is worked out
21 March is a standardisation of the Spring equinox, which may actually fall a day earlier or later. And the full moon isn't actually the real observed full moon, it is again a standardised date which may vary from an observed astronomical full moon by a couple of days. Lunar months are about 29.53 days long, but the system standardises them into months of 29 or 30 days. Lunar months also don't fit into a year, there are about 11 extra days in the year after 12 lunar cycles. So the calculation works on the fact that 19 years are as long as 235 lunar months. It all gets a little complicated but the point was to have a mathematical formula enabling anyone with an understanding of the system and an ability with numbers to be able to calculate the date without having to observe the sky - and importantly to ensure that you would come to the same date regardless of where you were on the earth (unlike observation). In today's world it has the added advantage that it can be calculated by a computer algorithm.
If you want to study this more see the excellent Wikipedia entry, Date of Easter
Easter Resources
I have a few drama scripts available to use at Easter, which hopefully will give you a lot of fun and pause for thought this Easter:
There is also a very funny script for Lent:
And an equally funny and thoughtful one about Pentecost:
© Rod Belt 2024
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