Last year
(2021), we celebrated Easter on the 4th of April. This year we celebrated
Easter on the 17th of April. Next year (2023), we will celebrate Easter on the 9th of April. The year after (2024), we will celebrate Easter on the 31st of March. In the year 2025, we will celebrate Easter on the 20th of April.
Easter will be celebrated on 5th April in the year 2026.
Why is there a variation in Easter dates every year and how is the date for Easter determined every
year?
Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry
briefly details the backdrop, “Luke 24:1 says that Jesus rose on the first
day of the week, Sunday. This is why we have Easter Sunday as the day of the
celebration which occurs once a year. Furthermore, Jesus was crucified at the
time of the Passover which is the 14th of Nissan. So traditionally Christians
would celebrate the resurrection of Christ on the first Sunday following the
traditional date of Christ’s crucifixion, which was a Friday following the
first full moon of the month, which corresponds to our modern month of April.
Therefore, “the dates of Easter can range from March 22 to April 25.””1
Professor Farrell
Brown in his article in Christianity
Today describes the dating process:2 [Emphasis Mine]
Our first stop on this tour of the
wandering Easter is a quick study of how calendars were used in the Biblical
lands around 30 A.D. Although the Julian or solar-based calendar of the Roman
Empire had been in place since 45 B.C., it did not supplant the lunar calendar
that was the chart and compass of 2,000 years of Jewish history. (A lunar year
is 12 lunar cycles of 29.53 days each or 354.36 days while a Julian year is
365.25 days with a leap day every four years.) The Julian calendar functions by
having three years of 365 days and one year of 366 days every four years.
The incongruence of the two calendars
had marred historical recordings in the Eastern Mediterranean and environs
since the dual systems began. And to add to the confusion, Jesus' followers had
failed to record the exact date of their Lord's resurrection. Many of those
first believers expected Jesus to return soon, a hope that (some scholars
believe) rendered such anniversaries unimportant for them. For these reasons, a
single, universally accepted date for the event's celebration had little to no
chance.
The Nicean accord
Three hundred years later in the
reign of the Roman Emperor Constantine, Christianity was beginning to spread
though [sic] out the Empire. Since any self-respecting religion was expected to have
its religious festivals and days of observance, a date for celebrating Easter
now became a priority. In fact, this was one of eight major topics considered
by priests and bishops at the church's first Ecumenical Council in 325, in
Nicea (present-day Turkey). One unanimously accepted canon guaranteed that
Easter would never fall on the beginning the Jewish Passover, perhaps reflecting
Christian animosity towards the Jewish people for their perceived role in
Jesus' death.
However, each church group present at
Nicea seemed to have a different opinion on the matter of Easter's date. The
biggest division was that between the Eastern churches of Antioch and Syria,
which still relied on the Jewish or lunar calendar for determining the date of
Easter, and the Western churches of Alexandria and Rome, which employed the
efficient solar calendar. The resulting accord, as commonly stated, was that Easter shall fall on the first Sunday
following the first full moon following the spring equinox. (The spring
equinox is one of the two times in the year when the sun crosses the celestial
equator and the length of day and night are approximately equal.)
This explains the 35-day span where
Easter can occur (March 22 - April 25, inclusive): the first Sunday after the
first full moon after the spring equinox may occur as little as two or as many
as 37 days from the equinox.
Endnotes:
1https://carm.org/other-questions/what-is-easter/
2https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2008/august/why-does-easters-date-wander.html
Websites
last accessed on 22nd April 2022.
