The Calendar Conflict Behind Holy Dates
As the world prepares to celebrate Easter this Sunday, there’s something particularly unique about this year’s festivities. Easter is considered to be the holiest day in the Christian calendar. The Christians across the world celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, which is described in the New Testament of the Bible.
However, unlike Christmas, which is celebrated on December 25, Easter is a moveable feast—it doesn’t occur on the same date from year to year. In the Gregorian calendar, it is observed on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. However, for the Eastern Orthodox Church, Easter is observed between April 4 and April 8.
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This year’s Easter will be celebrated on April 20, based on the Gregorian calendar, and apparently, the Eastern Orthodox will also observe Easter on Sunday.
Easter falls on the same day for Western and Eastern churches only when the full moon and calendars align in a specific way, as they will in 2025. The last time this happened was in 2017, and it won’t happen again until 2028.
The most common Easter date is either March 31 or April 16 over the past 500-year period. How is the Easter date confirmed? Easter Sunday always occurs on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon—that is, specifically, the first Sunday following the full moon that occurs on or after March 21.
Christmas’s date is fixed to a solar calendar, meanwhile Easter is based on the lunar cycles of the Jewish calendar. This is because Jesus was believed to be crucified and resurrected during the time of the Jewish festival of Passover. And this is the reason why the date of Easter varies.
What is Passover? Passover is a major festival that commemorates the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. According to the New Testament, Jesus’ crucifixion occurred around the time of Passover. In fact, the Last Supper is often interpreted as a Passover meal.
In the biblical narrative, as both events are historically and symbolically linked because of their shared time frame, it is not necessary that Good Friday comes after Passover. This is due to the differences in the Gregorian and Hebrew calendars. Thus, in some years, Passover comes after, or even on the same day as,Good Friday.
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This year, Jewish Passover will be observed from April 12 to April 20, while Good Friday will be observed on April 18.
Similarly, Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7 because they follow the Julian calendar, in which December 25 falls 13 days later than in the modern Gregorian calendar.
The Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. However, the system created was slightly longer than the solar year. Although the difference was minor, over centuries, the calendar gradually drifted out of sync with the seasons. To correct the drift, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582, which became much closer to the solar year. When the Western churches adopted the Gregorian calendar, many of the Eastern Orthodox churches continued to follow the Julian, which often falls 13 days later.
