Peter Costello
There has been renewed talk lately about fixing the date of Easter, rather than continuing with it as a moveable feast. This is the sort of idea that the appeals to both the tidy minded and the sort of person who believes that Sunday trading is good for the economy, however damaging yet another day in the Dundrum Town Centre might be for both workers and shoppers.
But settling on a fixed day is not a new idea. In the past learned tomes have been devoted to it by theologians. But Easter is a moveable feast for reasons associated with the cycles of the moon. Thus the present situation could be said to be not so much an outcome of mankind’s whims, so much as a result of cosmic connections which go to the heart of the matter of creation.
When Jesus and the apostles came together that evening in the upper room they were gathered to celebrate the feast of the Passover. For Judaism this is one of the most important festivals of the year, celebrating as it does the deliverance of the Hebrews from their bondage in Egypt. Whatever historians now think about the nature and date of Exodus, the feast is still celebrated in the intimacy of every observant Jewish family with great ceremony and piety.
Some of this was carried over into the new religion, for after all the earliest followers of Jesus were still observant Jews praying in the synagogue and visting the Temple in Jerusalem, where they would (according to Acts II: 46 and v. 12) assemble in the Porch of Solomon. To celebrate Easter they settled on 14 Nisan, the eve of the Lord’s Passover.
According to the Gospels, Jesus’ death and resurrection occurred around the time of the Jewish Passover, which was celebrated on the first full moon following the vernal equinox. This soon led to Christians celebrating Easter on different dates. At the end of the 2nd Century, some churches celebrated Easter on the day of the Passover, while others celebrated it on the following Sunday.
In 325 AD the Council of Nicea established that Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. From that point forward, the Easter date depended on the ecclesiastical approximation of March 21 for the vernal equinox.
Easter is delayed by one week if the full moon is on Sunday, which decreases the chances of it falling on the same day as the Jewish Passover.
The council’s ruling was against those Christians in the East who celebrated Easter on the day of the full moon, 14 days into the month as the Jews did.
Not all Christian churches observe Easter according the Gregorian calendar. Some churches still in the East celebrate Easter 11 days after the western churches.
So the date of Easter has become a matter of careful calculations, and falling as it did on different days, affected in turn the date of other Church feast days.
Observation
Some time ago, World Council of Churches, a grouping of Protestant churches, proposed a reform of the Easter calculation to replace an equation-based method of calculating Easter with direct astronomical observation.
This would have solved the Easter date difference between Churches that observe the Gregorian calendar and those that observe the Julian calendar. The reform was proposed to be implemented in 2001, but like so many proposed religious reforms has not come into force. Without the concurrence of the Catholic Church it is really hard to see how it could be widely accepted.
But one suspects that most Chrstians are unmoved by these considerations of change. Why indeed, many might say, should we alter our dating system to please a secular world which has no regard for what the feast celebrates in any case.
The date of Easter is not something to be settled for the convenience of modern hurly burly. It derives from a long tradition, steeped in religious history, which it is only right to respect, especially as I have said, when at its heart the date chosen connects us with the cosmos through the cycles of the planets, and so with the great truths that rule and run the universe.