Why is Easter celebrated on different days? Why is Easter celebrated on different days every year?

Few Christians know why Easter is on different days. To understand this issue, you need to remember the history of the holiday and the basis for calculating its date. Statistics show that even experts on this topic cannot summarize its essence in a nutshell; so many important events are intertwined here.

The Great Resurrection is one of the most important Christian holidays, which is revered by millions of believers, so it is so important to at least theoretically know why Easter is at different times. After all, in the modern world you don’t have to worry about this. Church calendars are issued indicating the dates of all holidays, and the Internet also comes to the rescue, which has ready-made formulas (you just need to set the year for calculation or find the appropriate topic).

How is the holy day calculated?

The day of celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ falls on a new date every year. It is calculated using special formulas, some of the data of which are variable quantities. To calculate the date of Christ's day using one of them you need to know:

Spring date when day is equal to night
Date of the full moon following the equinox
Day of the week on which Easter Sunday is celebrated

After looking at many of the calculations that scientists use, any desire to try to calculate the date of the holiday disappears, they are so complex and require certain knowledge, both in the field of mathematics and astronomy. Why is the date of Easter changing?

Determining the date using the formula

A fairly simple formula, proposed by Carl Gauss at the beginning of the 19th century, contains only mathematical calculations. He did not give an explanation for this calculation, but it can be used to determine the time of the holiday in any year.

Actions:

1. The year (or rather its number) in which you need to find out the date of the Great Day is divided by 19. Remainder = A
2. Number of year divided by 4 = B
3. Number of year divided by 7 = C
4. (19 * A + 15) : 30 = number and remainder = D
5. (2 * B + 4 * C + 6 * D + 6) : 7 = number. Remainder = E
6. D+E<= 9, то Пасха будет в марте + 22 дня, если >, then in April: the resulting number is 9

Example calculation for 2014:

1. 2014: 19 = 106, remainder = 0
2. 2014: 4 = 603 ost 2
3. 2014: 7 = 287 ost 5
4. (19 * 0 + 15) : 30 = 0.5 remainder 15
5. (2 * 2 + 4 * 5 + 6 * 15 + 6) : 7 = 17 remainder 1
6. 15+1 = 16 more than 9, which means the Feast of Christ will be in April 16-9 = 7, adjustment for style +13 days, which means April 20.

Sunday after the full moon

The Orthodox Church uses a calculation that was adopted back in the third century. Easter is celebrated according to the rules of the Alexandrian Paschal after the spring equinox (March 21 according to the old style and April 3 according to the new one) on the first Sunday after the full moon.

A little history

Many years have passed since Jesus Christ was crucified for human sins and resurrected. Since that time, Christ's Day has been celebrated annually on the fourteenth day of the first month of spring. According to the ancient lunar calendar, this event falls on the first day of the week, that is, Sunday. Before the conquest by Babylon, this month was called Aviv, and after the captivity - Nissan. The modern calendar has a clearly established framework for the celebration of the Resurrection of the Lord: this day can be between April 4 and May 8 according to the new style (March 22 and April 25 according to the old style).

The thing is that before there was no single calendar. One of the most ancient peoples - the Israelis - kept track of time according to the lunar calendar, while the Egyptians and Romans - according to the solar calendar.

Moon calendar: Main settings

12 months
Number of days in a month 29 or 30
Number of days in a year 354

Solar calendar: Main settings

12 months
Number of days in a month 30
Number of days in a year 365

It can be seen that the difference in days between the calendars was 11 days. To smooth out the discrepancy, the Jews added an additional month - the thirteenth (V-Adar) every few years. This happened in the year that is considered a leap year in the modern calendar. Some peoples believed that there were only 10 months (304 days) in a year, and the year began in March, and then the remaining January and February were added.

The implementation of two significant reforms simplified the process of monitoring the passing days:

1. Caesar's Reform - Julian Calendar

The Roman Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar decided to streamline the calendar on his territory. Thus, the new Julian calendar contained 365 days a year, and 366 in the leap year. But, despite this, the lunar calendar did not cease to exist and was carried out in parallel.

The reform was finally consolidated for the entire Christian world in 325 at a council of bishops. It was then that the months of July and August were named after the emperors. The Julian calendar is used in the Orthodox Church.

2. Foundation of the Gregorian calendar

Nature has its own laws. The Julian chronology turned out to be imperfect: the spring equinox was approaching, and on the calendar there was only March 11th. Again the need for reform arose. Pope Gregory XIII founded the Gregorian calendar in 1582, according to which the year consisted of 365 days.

This is interesting:

The inhabitants of Rome and Egypt, who were guided by the solar calendar, had a different number of days in the year: 355 and 354.

The new time system in Russia began to be used only 336 years after the reform. The Orthodox Church resisted accepting it, uprisings broke out, and blood was shed.

The difference between the new and old styles is now 13 days. The initial difference of 10 days increased by one day in each century.

First the Jewish Resurrection takes place, then the Catholic and Orthodox. Why this happens and why Easter cakes are baked can be found out by looking into history.

Dates often overlap: Jewish dates can coincide with Catholic dates, and Catholic dates can coincide with Orthodox dates. Jewish and Orthodox never intersect.

In Israel, the week begins on Sunday - this is the first working day. Saturday is a day off, and Friday is usually a shortened day.

During the existence of Alexandria, the day of Easter was calculated by the current bishop and reported to Rome, so that the celebration took place on one day. But gradually this tradition disappeared.

There was a time when Christians did not fool themselves by calculating the date of the Resurrection of the Lord and asking why Easter is a moving holiday. They celebrated the holiday a week after the Jewish Passover.

Easter is a wonderful spring holiday. All Christians celebrate it. But for many, the reason for changing the date of the celebration of the Great Resurrection remains a mystery.

Reason for changing the date of Easter

Easter is the main moving holiday in the church calendar. Many people associate the change in holiday date with Christmas or other religious holidays. But this judgment is wrong.

The reason for the constant date change has its roots in the history of the ancient Jews. The moment of Christ's resurrection coincided with the ancient Jewish holiday - the Jewish Passover (Passover). On this day, the Jews celebrate the exodus from Egypt. This date is fixed and does not change. It falls on the 14th day of the month of Abib in the Jewish calendar. The first full moon after the spring equinox always occurs on this day. According to the Julian calendar (it was used during the life of Christ), the equinox fell on March 21. And since the number of days in these calendars differed, the Easter holiday became moveable and is celebrated depending on the full moon following the day of the spring equinox.

How to calculate the date of Easter

Calculating the date of Easter on your own is quite a troublesome task. To do this you will need knowledge of the lunar calendar.

The Resurrection of Christ is celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon immediately following the spring equinox. This can be any day from April 4th to May 9th. Moreover, the number of options for the day of celebration is 532. I.e. all possible options take 532 years. This period is called the Great Indiction and it is constantly repeated.

In the modern world, programs have been developed specifically for convenience that allow you to calculate the day of the holiday. All the necessary data has already been entered into them and you only need to indicate the year of interest. In addition, you can always purchase a calendar indicating all Orthodox holidays, including moving ones.

Why is Catholic and Orthodox Easter different?

The difference between the two dates of the same holiday is that Catholics and Orthodox Christians use different calendars. In other words, March 21st will fall on different days according to the Julian calendar (old style) and the Gregorian calendar (new style). That is why Catholic Easter is usually celebrated a week earlier. But there are rare exceptions when the Holy Resurrection coincides for Catholics and Orthodox Christians

If our grandmothers clearly understood when Easter Sunday would be celebrated, then we learn about it from the Internet. And we are very surprised why Christmas, the Annunciation, and the Savior are celebrated every year on the same day, and the day of Easter celebration changes every year. Why does this depend and how to calculate it?

Why do we celebrate Easter on different days?

There is a long-standing rule that is common to all religions: Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon. And the first full moon follows the vernal equinox - March 22.

IMPORTANT. There are two exceptions to the uniform rule for celebrating Easter Sunday:

The first full moon falls on Sunday - Easter is postponed to the next;
. Christian Easter is not celebrated on the same day as the Jewish one.

We focus on the lunar calendar, which is 354 days (in the solar calendar - 365 or 366 days if the year is a leap year). It is also important to understand that the lunar month consists of 29.5 days, so the full moon occurs every 29 days.

It turns out that the first full moon after the vernal equinox (March 21) occurs on different days, which is why the date of Easter is shifted.

IMPORTANT. Since the vernal equinox occurs on the night of March 21-22, Easter is celebrated no earlier than April 4 and no later than May 8.

Determining the date of Easter using the formula

This simple formula was proposed by Carl Gauss at the beginning of the 19th century:

1. The year (its number) in which you need to find out the date of the Great Day is divided by 19. Remainder = A

2. Divide the number of the year by 4 = B

3. Divide the number of the year by 7 = C

4. (19 * A + 15): 30 = number and remainder = D

5. (2 * B + 4 * C + 6 * D + 6) : 7 = number. Remainder = E

6. D + E<= 9, то Пасха будет в марте + 22 дня, если >, then in April: the resulting number is 9

Why is Easter celebrated on different days in different religions?

There have long been calls to celebrate Catholic and Orthodox Easter on the same day, because these churches calculate chronology according to different calendars (Orthodox - according to the Julian, and Catholics - according to the Gregorian).

In 2017 there is an exception, and we celebrate Easter on one day - April 16. Here's how things will be in 2018 and beyond.

The reason for this difference goes back to the distant year 325, when the First Ecumenical Council established the rule for calculating the day of Easter: in Rome (Catholics) - the vernal equinox on March 18, in Alexandria (Orthodox) - March 21.

IMPORTANT. With the Jewish Passover (Pesach) everything is much simpler: it always, annually occurs on the 15th day of the month Nisan. This is the date of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, and the beginning of the month in the lunar calendar of the Jews is the new moon, and the lunar month lasts 28 days.

The question “why is Easter at a different time every year?” sooner or later every Christian asks himself. Some people attribute this to established church traditions and stop racking their brains in vain, while for others their natural curiosity gives them no rest. What's the matter? Why did Easter fall into the category of moving holidays, since Christ was resurrected on a specific day? Let's try to figure it out.

How is the date of the Holy Day calculated?

To answer why Easter falls at different times, either at the beginning of April, or at the end, or even in May, we will first have to turn to history. And secondly, look through several calendars: Jewish, Julian, Gregorian... The main thing is not to get confused!

When determining the date of the most important holiday in the Christian world, the Church focuses on three points.

1. Spring equinox.

It is with him, and not from March 1, as the dry official calendars interpret, that spring comes to the world, and nature awakens from hibernation and seems to rise from under the snow. It is logical that Easter, the holiday of the Resurrection and Renewal of life, was decided to be celebrated after this date, and not before, while the earth was frozen.

The jubilation of awakened nature emphasizes the joyful mood of the holiday

2. The first full moon after the equinox.

And this is a reference to the solar-lunar Jewish calendar, which, by the way, is still in use in Israel. In it, the phases of the Moon are clearly tied to certain dates and do not have the habit of “swimming” along the calendar grid, as happens with us. That is why, both now and 2000 years ago, the Jewish Passover - a holiday in honor of liberation from Egyptian captivity - began on the 14th day of the month of Nisan and always coincided with the full moon. Since Christ was crucified during this holiday and resurrected three days later, the Church tries not to disrupt the historical course of events: first the full moon, then the Resurrection.

The Jewish Passover - Passover - lasts seven days, like the Easter week of Christians.

3. Day of the week.

According to tradition, the bright holiday should fall on Sunday. If the first full moon after the equinox coincides with Sunday, the solemn date is postponed another week.

This is why Easter is celebrated at different times, because full moons do not have a firmly designated place in the calendar that we use, and therefore all the dates associated with them are regularly shifted in one direction or another.

The most important religious issues were decided at the councils

This calculation procedure was established by the Council of Nicaea in 325 in order to clarify the issue of the date of Easter celebration (some, in the old fashioned way, celebrated it on the day of the crucifixion of Christ, as a memory of the Savior’s sacrifice). And in the 4th-8th centuries, the Eternal Paschal appeared, a method for calculating the required dates, covering a period of as much as 532 years. The Orthodox Church still uses it to this day. Although, I must admit, these calculations are not entirely flawless...

Two Churches, two calendars

This state of affairs continued until the split of the united Christian Church into Orthodox and Catholic in 1054 and more than 500 years after. However, over time it became clear that the Julian calendar adopted at the Council of Nicea was not consistent with real astronomical data. Every 128 years, he “lost” 24 hours, falling behind the readings of the heavenly bodies. By 1500, the error was already 13 days. Almost two weeks!

Having decided to restore order in the chronology, in 1582 Pope Gregory the 13th introduced a new calendar, called the Lilian calendar after Aloysus Lilius, adviser to the head of the Roman church. The name did not catch on - today we know the calendar as the Gregorian - but the new system turned out to be in demand.

Is the exact date so important? After all, the meaning of the holiday is more important!

The Orthodox Church decided not to change traditions, remaining faithful to the old calendar approved by the Council of Nicaea. And Christians all over the world now have reason to ask two questions: why is Easter always at different times and why does the date of its celebration not coincide among adherents of two faiths who worship the same God?

Note that both methods of chronology have advantages and disadvantages. Thus, the Gregorian calendar does not have significant discrepancies with the data of astronomers. But Easter, according to his calculations, often coincides with a Jewish holiday or precedes it. And this already contradicts logic: the Resurrection cannot be before the Crucifixion.

The Julian or Orthodox calendar does not suffer from such incidents, but loses to the Gregorian calendar in punctuality. Alas, you can’t discount 13 “lost” days! On the other hand, the blessed fire of Bethlehem descends to earth before Orthodox Easter and through the prayers of the Orthodox Patriarch. So, these calculations are not so wrong?

Let the holiday bring joy to everyone, regardless of calendars!

Video: Church calendar

Why is Easter at a different time every time and how is this explained historically? A small explanation from the Glas television company.

Why is Easter celebrated at different times every year?

Answered by priest Mikhail Vorobiev, rector of the temple
in honor of the Exaltation of the Honest Life-Giving Cross of the Lord in the city of Volsk

The holiday of Easter, or the Holy Resurrection of Christ, is the main moving holiday of the church calendar. This feature of the holiday is determined by the fact that it is tied to the extremely complex solar-lunar calendar adopted by the Jews. The Resurrection of Christ occurred on the days when the Jews celebrated their Passover, which for them was a memory of the exodus from Egypt. The Jewish holiday of Passover is not a moving holiday in the Jewish calendar: it was always celebrated from the 14th to the 21st day of the month of Abib (Nisan). The 14th of Nisan in the Jewish solar-lunar calendar, by the very meaning of this calendar, was the first full moon after the vernal equinox. During the era of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, the vernal equinox fell on March 21 according to the Julian calendar (named after Julius Caesar). Therefore, the Jewish holiday of Easter, already in the Julian calendar system, became moveable: it fell on the first full moon after March 21, and Christian Easter was celebrated on the first Sunday after this day. (If March 21 coincided with the full moon and Sunday, then Christian Easter was celebrated a week later, on March 28.)

The first full moon after the spring equinox may occur between March 21 and April 18. If the full moon on April 18 falls on a Sunday, then Christian Easter is celebrated a week later on Sunday April 25, since the sequence of events in biblical history requires that the Resurrection of Christ be celebrated later than the first day of the Jewish Passover.

Thus, the Orthodox holiday of Easter can be celebrated on any day from March 22 to April 25 according to the Julian calendar (old style), or (in the 20th and 21st centuries, when the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars is 13 days) from April 4 to May 8 inclusive according to the new style.

However, the alternation of dates on which Orthodox Easter is celebrated, within the interval from April 4 to May 8, is subject to complex rules related to the difficulty of coordinating the solar and lunar years. The minimum period of time in which the dates of the Easter holiday occupy all possible positions is 532 years. This huge period of time is called the Great Indiction. After the Great Indiction, the dates of Easter begin to alternate in the same order. Therefore, it is enough to have one calculated Easter for a period of 532 years, after which everything will be repeated.

The period of time from April 4 to May 8 defines the holiday of Easter in the Orthodox Church. The Roman Catholic Church and most Protestant denominations calculate Easter based on the date of the vernal equinox on March 21 according to the Gregorian calendar (new style). This starting point in Easter calculations gives completely different dates for the Easter holiday. Therefore, Easter for Roman Catholics and Western Protestants occurs between March 22 and April 25 according to the Gregorian calendar. In rare cases, it coincides with Orthodox Easter. Since the Jews, unlike Western Christians, did not change their historical calendar, their 14th Nisan is still counted from the vernal equinox on March 21 in the Julian (April 3 in the Gregorian) calendar. Thus, Catholic Easter in some years may coincide with Jewish Easter and even precede it, which contradicts the sequence of events in the earthly life of Jesus Christ.