Does the president set the date for easter?
No he doesn’t. Until the year 325 AD Easter was celebrated at various times different parts of the world; some even aligning it with the Passover (Pasach) of Judaism. The 325AD Church Council, to standardise the celebration of the Resurrection, determined that Easter would always fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal(spring) equinox. The vernal equinox is the day that the day the sun crosses the equator into the northern hemisphere. In 2008 the vernal equinox was March the 20th. The full moon after that was was March 21st, so Easter fell on Sunday March 23rd.
