When is Easter? Well, it depends - A movable feast

When is Easter? Well, it depends...

                               A movable feast
                                        Presented byDr Robert BeckfordTheologian
                                        In collaboration withProfessor Richard
                                        GamesonDurham University

                                      Easter is the most famous movable feast in
                                      our calendar. Its date appears to change un-
                                      predictably from year to year, and different
                                      branches of Christianity disagree on when
                                      exactly it should be marked. In some years,
                                      like 2014, western Christians and the Eastern
churches (such as the Greek and Russian communities) celebrate Easter on the
same Sunday – but that is not always the case.

It may seem strange that the Resurrection is not remembered on the same date
across Christianity, and the reasons for this are intriguing. After the death of Jesus,
Christian communities disagreed on the date it was said to have happened. Using
the lunar calendar to determine its date added another layer of complexity, as there
were various methods to calculate lunar cycles.

Christians became real experts in the science of calculating the date of Easter year
by year, known as ‘computus’. It’s no exaggeration to say that Easter played a key
role in keeping maths and astronomy alive during the early middle ages. Groups
across continents also used different Gospels to back up their traditions resulting in
increasingly heated arguments.

         Follow John the Evangelist - and be a heretic
© The British Library Board

Egyptian monk St Pachomius was said to have received the Easter Tables from an
angel
                                                    At the end of the 2nd Centu-
                                                    ry, the bishop of Rome
                                                    threatened the community of
                                                    Ephesus (in modern day Tur-
                                                    key) with excommunication if
                                                    they continued to celebrate
                                                    Easter on the 14th day of the
                                                    first spring moon, in accord-
                                                    ance with John’s Gospel.

                                                         Christians in Rome and Alex-
                                                         andria celebrated on the first
                                                         full moon of the spring equi-
                                                         nox, when the day lasts as
                                                         long as the night.

At the first Council of Nicea in 325 AD, it was decided that all churches should follow
the Roman-Alexandrian custom. In theory, this should have ended the argument;
but in practice, with no universal method of calculating Easter day, there were still
problems.

What happened in early England was a good example of how the disagreements
were both religious and political.

               England: May the strongest saint win!
The most famous dispute over Easter in early England was acted out in the 7th Cen-
tury, after Northumbria had been evangelised by Irish monks from Iona. They were
very different from the Roman missionaries who had arrived in Kent a generation
earlier.

The methods for calculating Easter were just some of the sources of contention be-
tween the Irish and Roman monks. Indeed an explosive mix of politics and theology
brought local disagreements to a head.

           The Reformation: Fast forward the clocks!
Sir John Soane’s Museum

                                                'An Election: 1. The Entertainment' by
                                                William Hogarth includes a satirical
                                                reference to the 1752 calendar re-
                                                form. The placard on the bottom right
                                                immortalises the cry 'Give us our
                                                eleven days'

                                                King Henry VIII's break with Rome
                                                and the Protestant Reformation had a
                                                huge impact on the Church in Eng-
                                                land. These changes did not in them-
                                                selves affect the calculation of Easter,
                                                but they paved the way for even
                                                more division before the end of the
                                                16th Century.

Up to then, most Christians had followed the Julian calendar, so called because it
had been established by Julius Caesar in 46 BC.

But the Julian calendar had underestimated the duration of the Earth’s orbit around
the sun. So, after 16 centuries, there was a difference of over a week between solar
and calendar time.

                             Gregorian solutions
In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII, with the help of a team of astronomers, managed to rea-
lign the two by dropping some days. That year, in all countries choosing to imple-

ment the papal decree, the 4 October was to be followed by 15 October. From that
date, the new and more accurate Gregorian calendar was to be followed.

But the fact that this correction was issued by a Catholic Pope caused much re-
sistance in Protestant countries, like England.

                          Calendar conundrums
Countries in Europe now used different date systems which resulted in some bizarre
scenarios. For example, an Englishman could legitimately reply to a letter received
from France on a date before it had even been written! As for Easter, the spring
equinox was now generally accepted to be 21 March. However, from 1583, that date
arrived 10 days earlier in Catholic countries.

                       ‘Give us back our 11 days’
England finally adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. That year, Parliament decid-
ed that Wednesday 2 September would be followed immediately by Thursday 14.
Satirists claimed that there was a popular cry of “Give us back our 11 days”.

The introduction of the Gregorian calendar did not mean that Christians as a whole
celebrated Easter on the same day, as the Orthodox Churches remained faithful to
the Julian calendar. For non-religious purposes, the Gregorian calendar is now used
by across Europe and Russia - but the passage from one to the other was not always
smooth.

                                   East v West
The transition between the Julian and the Gregorian calendar wasn’t always smooth.
Click on the name of a country to find out what happened.

    Sweden                                                  Russia

Britain

France                    Greece

Sweden had a very controversial relationship with the Gregorian calendar.

It started the transition from Julian to Gregorian in 1700, but did so by gradually
omitting leap days (29 February) from leap years over the course of 40 years. This
meant that the Swedish calendar was out of synch with both the Julian and Gregori-
an calendars.

In 1712, Sweden decided to restore the Julian calendar to make things easier. This
was done by adding an extra leap day, which meant that that year in Sweden had a
30 February. Sweden completely switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1753.

Russia’s Orthodox Church, the largest of Orthodox churches, follows the Julian calen-
dar, but it did not adopt the Revised Julian Calendar proposed in 1923.

The Russian state, however, adopted the Gregorian calendar after the Bolshevic Rev-
olution of 1917, formally switching in 1918.

The revolution is known as the October Revolution, but its anniversary is actually
celebrated in November: this is because in 1917 Russia still followed the Julian cal-
endar and the Revolution happened at the end of the Julian month of October - the
beginning of the Gregorian November.

The Calendar Act of 1752 also changed the first day of the year.

Before 1752, the first day of the year in England was 25 March; from 1752 onwards,
it was 1 January. However, Scotland had started using 1 January as the first day of a
new year much earlier – in 1600, when it was a separate kingdom from England.

The tax year in Britain had also started on 25 March. When the calendar was re-
formed, it was decided that this would be kept to avoid confusing and antagonising
the population.

But as 11 days still had to be skipped to move into alignment with the Gregorian cal-
endar, 25 March became 5 April. In 1800, the Treasury added an extra day to the
financial calendar and it was decided that the tax year would start on 6 April – and it
has done ever since.

France adopted the Gregorian calendar soon after the papal bull, at the end of 1582.

However, following the French Revolution, the French Republican Calendar replaced
the Gregorian calendar, in order to avoid the religious connotations associated with
the latter.

This was a radical reformulation that also redefined a week as 10 days and a month
as three weeks (changing all their names), and began the year at the September
equinox.

Perhaps unsurprisingly it was short lived: adopted in 1793, it was abandoned by Na-
poleon’s regime in 1806.

The Greek Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar for religious purposes.

In 1923, a synod in Constantinople proposed a Revised Julian Calendar, which tem-
porarily aligns the Julian with the Gregorian calendar – albeit not for the dating of
Easter.

However, many Orthodox churches decided not to adopt this calendar, including a
Greek group called the Old Calendarists.

For civil purposes, Greece was the last European country to adopt the Gregorian cal-
endar. It did so on Wednesday 15 February 1923, which was followed by Thursday 1
March 1923.

Countries in blue calculate the date of Easter using the Gregorian calendar, while
countries in green use the Julian.

                   Doomed by its own complexity?

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill I leading prayers in Moscow during the Easter Mid-
night Mass in 2013

In an era when the church year no longer dictates the activities of most people, the
movable Easter festival can represent an unnecessary complication in planning
school terms, and many have suggested that a ‘fixed’ Easter should be adopted.

In 2009 the issue was even debated by the World Council of Churches, with the sug-
gestion that a fixed date might be resolved upon. But as this was only to come about
if all the Churches agreed, it seems unlikely to be adopted.

This issue concerning the most important day in the Christian calendar will continue
to be a matter of debate for some time to come - 2000 years after all Christians
agree that Jesus rose from the dead.

         What if Easter was always on the same date?

The 1928 Easter Act provided a fixed date for Easter, but was never implemented. In
1999, a bill proposed to bring the Act into force. What were the arguments?

Earl of Dartmouth
Businesses would all like to know the date of Easter in advance. It would also make
life easier for parents, teachers and tourists.

The Lord Bishop of Oxford
The real benefit for the Churches would not be a fixed date, but all Christians in the
world celebrating Easter on the same date.

Lord Hoyle
The date of Easter is well known in advance. The real issue has been that Eastern
and the Western Churches calculate it differently.