How is the date for Easter determined?
The short answer: Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox. The long answer is REALLY long and literally covers thousands of years of history, arcane astronomical calculations and a little political wrangling. For a well-documented discussion of the matter see: http://www.assa.org.au/edm.html. This site details everything you ever wanted to know about Easter but were afraid to ask. One interesting side note about the date of Easter is that the Eastern Orthodox churches do not celebrate Easter (called Pascha) on the same date as most other Christian churches. The Eastern Orthodox Church uses a different method to calculate the date and it generally falls a couple of weeks later than the western Easter.
” Answer: The four Gospels make it clear that Jesus was crucified in conjunction with the Jewish Passover (Matthew 26:17-19; Mark 14:12-16; Luke 22:7-15; John 18:28,39; 19:14). The four Gospels also make it clear that Jesus was raised from the dead three days later, on the first day of the week (Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2,9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1,19). Biblically speaking, then, Christs resurrection should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the Jewish Passover meal. However, this is not the case. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (March 21 in 2008, the first day of spring). This method of determining the date of Easter often results in Easter being before Passover and/or displaced far from Passover. Easter can potentially be observed anywhere between March 22 and April 25. In church history, there was a significant amount of debate that went into determining when Easter would be observed. As a background, please read our article
