How the Date of Pascha is Fixed

Most of us have noticed that in the majority of years, the celebration of Easter for Orthodox Christians and for Protestant or Catholics does not fall on the same Sunday. There is a reason for this. Easter is determined by all churches using the same formula: it should be observed on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. Western Christian Churches use the Gregorian calendar to determine this, which has been the standard calendar for most of the secular world since 1582. The Eastern Church (Orthodox Christianity) however, uses the formula with the original, Julian calendar. Also, because all of the events of Holy Week and Easter took place after Jesus entered Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Passover, Easter can never be before Passover.
And, to further complicate things, the Western church does not use the actual, or astronomically correct date for the vernal equinox, but a fixed date (March 21). And by full moon, it does not mean the astronomical full moon but the "ecclesiastical moon," which is based on tables created by the Catholic Church. These constructs allow the date of Easter to be calculated in advance rather than determined by actual astronomical observances, which are naturally less predictable. So as a result, in the Western Church, Easter sometimes precedes Passover by weeks.

At any rate, as Orthodox Christians, those of us with small children are always happy when Pascha follows Western Easter- think of all the Easter candy on sale!

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BA in education, MAR, in theology and religious studies, CPE, parish DRE, 30 years in teaching and Christian Education, workshop and curriculum design. Associate, Department of Christian Education, Antiochian Archdiocese