easter in 2008 is wrong?

Question

Unless I am mistaken... and i do believe i am NOT.

Easter sunday is...

The First Sunday after the First Monday fallowing the first full moon after the vernal equinox....

the vernal equinox is March 20th (wednessday)
The full moon is the next day (thursday the 21st)
So than the first monday is the 24th which means easter sunday must be the sunday fallowing that...

Which is March 30th

So, unless I am wrong in my understanding of when easter falls, we are wrong this year as Easter Sunday is falling on March 23rd....

Answer 1

Actually, it's the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. There's some fine time calculations in there which may sometimes make it seem not what you'd expect depending on when the full moon falls, but as far as I know Monday has never been in the equation.

23rd is correct.

And to the first answerer, astronomy actually has a lot to do with it, and always has. It was originally a pagan holiday, is why.

Answer 2

You've already had an excellent response to your question, but I wanted to clarify something, to help you understand it a bit more.

In a congress held in 1923, the eastern churches adopted a modified Gregorian Calendar and decided to set the date of Easter according to the astronomical Full Moon for the meridian of Jerusalem. However, a variety of practices remain among the eastern churches.

There are three major differences between the ecclesiastical system and the astronomical system.

* The times of the **ecclesiastical full moons** are not necessarily identical to the times of astronomical Full Moons. The ecclesiastical tables did not account for the full complexity of the lunar motion.
* The vernal equinox has a precise astronomical definition determined by the actual apparent motion of the Sun as seen from the Earth. It is the precise time at which the apparent ecliptic longitude of the Sun is zero. (Yes, the Sun's ecliptic longitude, not its declination, is used for the astronomical definition.) This precise time shifts within the civil calendar very slightly from year to year. In the ecclesiastical system the vernal equinox does not shift; it is fixed at March 21 regardless of the actual motion of the Sun.
* The date of Easter is a specific calendar date. Easter starts when that date starts for your local time zone. The vernal equinox occurs at a specific date and time all over the Earth at once.

Inevitably, then, the date of Easter occasionally differs from a date that depends on the astronomical Full Moon and vernal equinox. In some cases this difference may occur in some parts of the world and not in others because two dates separated by the International Date Line are always simultaneously in progress on the Earth.

And, here is a correct algorithm to use in computing when Easter falls.

Computing the Date of Easter

The rule is that Easter is the first Sunday after the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after March 21. The lunar cycles used by the ecclesiastical system are simple to program. The following algorithm will compute the date of Easter in the Gregorian Calendar system.

The algorithm uses the year, y, to give the month, m, and day, d, of Easter. The symbol * means multiply.

Please note the following: This is an integer calculation. All variables are integers and all remainders from division are dropped. For example, 7 divided by 3 is equal to 2 in integer arithmetic.

c = y / 100
n = y - 19 * ( y / 19 )
k = ( c - 17 ) / 25
i = c - c / 4 - ( c - k ) / 3 + 19 * n + 15
i = i - 30 * ( i / 30 )
i = i - ( i / 28 ) * ( 1 - ( i / 28 ) * ( 29 / ( i + 1 ) )
* ( ( 21 - n ) / 11 ) )
j = y + y / 4 + i + 2 - c + c / 4
j = j - 7 * ( j / 7 )
l = i - j
m = 3 + ( l + 40 ) / 44
d = l + 28 - 31 * ( m / 4 )


For example, using the year 2010,
y=2010,
c=2010/100=20,
n=2010 - 19 x (2010/19) = 2010 - 19 x (105) = 15, [see note above regarding integer calculations]
etc. resulting in Easter on April 4, 2010.

The algorithm is due to J.-M. Oudin (1940) and is reprinted in the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac, ed. P. K. Seidelmann (1992). See Chapter 12, "Calendars", by L. E. Doggett.

Answer 3

The calculations for the date of Easter are somewhat complicated. Easter day is determined by many factors taken into account. Tradionally, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal or spring equinox (date when night and day are of equal duration), which is March 21. Thus, the date for Easter will always fall sometime between March 22 and April 25.

Answer 4

Hi. I think that you are right. In 1800, mathematician Carl Gauss developed an algorithm to work out when Easter Sunday would be (using the same principle you mentioned): this can be simulated in a computer program (which I just had to create for a software class) and according to that program it is the 30th of March 2008.

In fact, here is his algorithm: (the '%' means take the remainder of the division)

int y = 2008;
int a = y % 19;
int b = y / 100;
int c = y % 100;
int d = b / 4;
int e = b % 4;
int g = (8 * b + 13) / 25;
int h = (19 * a + b - d + 15) % 30;
int j = c / 4;
int k = c % 4;
int m = (a + 11 * h) / 319;
int r = (2 * e + 2 * j - k - h + m + 32) % 7;
int n = (h - m + r + 90) / 25;
int p = (h - m + r + n + 19) % 32;

And Easter falls on day p of month n.

Try it out.

Answer 5

I hope this helps I copied it from an Easter history site.


When is Easter?
According to the New Testament, Christ was crucified on the eve of Passover and shortly afterward rose from the dead. In consequence, the Easter festival commemorated Christ's resurrection. In time, a serious difference over the date of the Easter festival arose among Christians. Those of Jewish origin celebrated the resurrection immediately following the Passover festival, which, according to their Babylonian lunar calendar, fell on the evening of the full moon (the 14th day in the month of Nisan, the first month of the year); by their reckoning, Easter, from year to year, fell on different days of the week.

Christians of Gentile origin, however, wished to commemorate the resurrection on the first day of the week, Sunday; by their method, Easter occurred on the same day of the week, but from year to year it fell on different dates. An important historical result of the difference in reckoning the date of Easter was that the Christian churches in the East, which were closer to the birthplace of the new religion and in which old traditions were strong, observed Easter according to the date of the Passover festival. The churches of the West, descendants of Greco-Roman civilization, celebrated Easter on a Sunday.

Rulings of the Council of Nicaea on the Date of Easter

Constantine I, Roman emperor, convoked the Council of Nicaea in 325. The council unanimously ruled that the Easter festival should be celebrated throughout the Christian world on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox; and that if the full moon should occur on a Sunday and thereby coincide with the Passover festival, Easter should be commemorated on the Sunday following. Coincidence of the feasts of Easter and Passover was thus avoided.

The Council of Nicaea also decided that the calendar date of Easter was to be calculated at Alexandria, then the principal astronomical center of the world. The accurate determination of the date, however, proved an impossible task in view of the limited knowledge of the 4th-century world. The principal astronomical problem involved was the discrepancy, called the epact, between the solar year and the lunar year. The chief calendric problem was a gradually increasing discrepancy between the true astronomical year and the Julian calendar then in use.

Later Dating Methods

Ways of fixing the date of the feast tried by the church proved unsatisfactory, and Easter was celebrated on different dates in different parts of the world. In 387, for example, the dates of Easter in France and Egypt were 35 days apart. About 465, the church adopted a system of calculation proposed by the astronomer Victorinus (fl. 5th cent.), who had been commissioned by Pope Hilarius (r. 461–68) to reform the calendar and fix the date of Easter. Elements of his method are still in use. Refusal of the British and Celtic Christian churches to adopt the proposed changes led to a bitter dispute between them and Rome in the 7th century.
Reform of the Julian calendar in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, through adoption of the Gregorian calendar, eliminated much of the difficulty in fixing the date of Easter and in arranging the ecclesiastical year; since 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was also adopted in Great Britain and Ireland, Easter has been celebrated on the same day in the Western part of the Christian world. The Eastern churches, however, which did not adopt the Gregorian calendar, commemorate Easter on a Sunday either preceding or following the date observed in the West. Occasionally the dates coincide; the most recent times were in 1865 and 1963.

Because the Easter holiday affects a varied number of secular affairs in many countries, it has long been urged as a matter of convenience that the movable dates of the festival be either narrowed in range or replaced by a fixed date in the manner of Christmas. In 1923 the problem was referred to the Holy See, which has found no canonical objection to the proposed reform. In 1928 the British Parliament enacted a measure allowing the Church of England to commemorate Easter on the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. Despite these steps toward reform, Easter continues to be a movable feast.

An article from Funk & Wagnalls® New Encyclopedia. © 2005 World Almanac Education Group, A WRC Media

Answer 6

Easter, the christian holiday, is simply the first sunday in April


Beltane the Pagan holiday which easter is derived form. , would fall on the 23rd by your calculations. I have not looked that far ahead yet.

Christians use set dates. or days. Pagans go by the moon cycles.

Answer 7

My grandkids and that i are going to Sunday college then later to church the place they'll say their Easter speeches. After church the Easter egg hunt around the church grounds if climate facilitates (it relatively is assume to rain Easter Sunday here). Then we can bypass to our familiar buffet eating place to consume. i don't experience like cooking this Easter. We colored eggs final night. happy Easter to you!

Answer 8

if so then can be celebrated twice though an error s not good as Easter is not just about the Easter Bunny but about Christianity.

Answer 9

what exatly does THAT prove? ive never heard that easter involved the vernal equanox. what twisted planet are U from?

Answer 10

oooooooohhhhh i think ur right ithink we think the same thing!
sweet! anywayz ur right
we should not celebrate easter that sunday I know i wont