How Is The Date For Easter Determined?

             Easter is not celebrated on a particular date of any year like Christmas.

            Last year (2021), we celebrated Easter on the 4^th of April. This year we celebrated Easter on the 17^th of April. Next year (2023), we will celebrate Easter on the 9^th of April. The year after (2024), we will celebrate Easter on the 31^st of March. In the year 2025, we will celebrate Easter on the 20^th of April. Easter will be celebrated on 5^th 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 22^nd April 2022.