Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! I know we should remember the resurrection every day of the year, but that doesn't mean we can't set aside a day to remember it, candy eggs and pagan names aside. Something interesting, but Easter this year is the earliest it has been since 1913, and it will not be this early again until 2160.

Why does Easter bounce around so much? It's never been a holiday I've actively looked forward to, because it always snuck up on me, or seemed to take forever to get here. Well, in the Bible, Christ rose again three days after the Passover, and the Jews kept track of the Passover according to their calendar, based on things like spring equinoxes and moon phases. We use the calendar the Romans cooked up (look back on our February 29th posting for more on that happiness), which doesn't follow astronomy as closely. Therefore, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Because our months have 30 or 31 days (lunar phases cycle every, like, 28 days) and because our seven-day week is not based on anything astronomical (I wouldn't call God's creation of the universe astronomical, per se), a date that would stay put on a Jewish calendar jumps around on ours. For an idea of how complicated this can become, check out to see a simplified version of the tables and algorithms they use to figure it out.

Therefore, Easter can occur on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25. Early Easters are much more uncommon. The last time Easter was on March 22 was 1818, and it won't be on that day again until 2285. So sad, none of us will ever hunt for eggs on March 22.

Late Easters are decidedly more common. Last time Easter was on April 25 was in 1943, and the next one will happen in 2038. I'll be, uh.... 55.

Oh, and because I know some people freak out and start wringing their hands over the fact that Easter started out as a pagan holiday.... well, settle down. The tradition of commemorating the Resurrection probably started with the small group of disciples that hung around after Jesus died, but it didn't get established into an official feast day until after the early Catholic Church became official. The name we call it by, Easter, is from a Germanic goddess named Eostre, who represented such things as spring, re-birth, and the dawn. Maybe it was a missionary tool to help bring pagans into the fold. Either way, if you consider Eostre a symbol and not a literal diety, than the things it symbolizes certainly jive with the religious components of Easter. But, since I am neither Catholic nor an adherent of ancient Teutonic goddesses, I don't think it matters much at this point what they call the holiday.