Calculating the Date of Easter

Coronavirus lockdown measures are likely to disrupt Easter bank holiday weekend plans across the UK this year. Here is everything you need to know about the holiday , which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The holiday is celebrated differently around the world. In the US, people give out painted eggs and baskets of sweets, while British children go on hunts for chocolate eggs left by the Easter Bunny.

Easter Sunday The controversy surrounding the date of Easter; Easter does not fall on a fixed date, but on the first Sunday after the full moon.

H ow Easter became a primary church festival is an example of inculturation— the blending of early New Testament Church and pagan cultures until a new ritual was created. The original Passover service as practiced by Jesus Christ and His early followers was replaced by a festival recalling not His death but His resurrection.

At root, Easter is an ancient pagan fertility celebration and nothing to do with the practice of the early Church. The debate over the timing of the new celebration, known eventually as the Quartodeciman Controversy, reverberated across the Roman Empire for almost three centuries. In C. They held the memorial on the 14 th day of the Hebrew month Nisan, the same date as the Jewish Passover. But it was clearly irksome to many that the Jewish dating of Passover was the determinant of the date of Easter.

According to the Julian Calendar, the year began at the vernal or spring equinox. Let there be nothing in common between you and the detestable mob of Jews! We have received from the Saviour another way; a course is open to our most holy religion that is both lawful and proper. Let us with one accord take up this course, right honourable brothers, and so tear ourselves away from that disgusting complicity.