How is the date of Easter determined each year?
The precise date of Easter has at times been a matter for contention. At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 it was decided that all Christians would celebrate Easter on the same day, which would be a Sunday. Prior to this, it was celebrated on the day of the full moon of Spring — regardless if it were a Sunday. The early Catholic church decreed that Easter should fall on a Sunday: • that this Sunday must follow the fourteenth day of the paschal moon; • that the moon was to be accounted the paschal moon whose fourteenth day followed the spring equinox. The fourteenth day of the moon’s phase is the full moon (28 days per lunar cycle with the full phase in the middle). Therefore, Easter is to occur on the first Sunday following the full moon AFTER the first day of Spring. So, calculating for 2008, the first full moon after the Spring Equinox is on Friday, 3/21. The first Sunday following that full moon is 3/23. This is a very “early” Easter because the equinox and full moon occur so clos
