Does any christian know how to calculate Easter?

Question

If so, can you explain why Easter is calculated by using events in pagan calendars?

Exactly why I asked the question, Diane ;) I'm curious to know as well.

PS; I know how Easter is calculated. I just want to know why those events.

Equinox, Chris C - apart from that; entirely correct.

Like a lot of pagans have simply answered, and most christians obviously haven't;

Easter *always* falls on the first Sunday AFTER the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox (that's 21st of March, by the way...)

If you don't believe me, look at the past few years' calendars for Easter, then calculate.

Now, all those are very pagan - I just want to know now why this very christian holiday is based on paganistic calculations.

Answer 1

Most of them haven't a clue.

It's the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox.

Makes me smile every year. I do so love being a Pagan.

Answer 2

I'm not Christian, but I know that it's the first Sunday after the first full moon of Spring .
Easter is copied directly from the Pagan holiday known as the rebirth . All the trappings of Christian Easter are takes directly form the Pagan . Eggs , young chicks , bunnies , flowers , everything that suggests rebirth - - - after a hard bare winter.
The Christians made their Christ come back to life ( rebirth ) at the very same time .
The reason that this was done, as well as stealing the Winter solstice holiday of The Return of Light , was because it was easier to use the old to work in the new . It was more acceptable and softened the jolt .
Anyway , the old holidays of The Return of Light and The Rebirth with all of their trappings are still celebrated with the addition of Jesus . There are some things stronger than the church .

Answer 3

I have the calculation at home in a letter written in around 1978. I will post it to YA when I get home by editing this reply. I assume you mean how was the FIRST Easter determined. I can assure you there is a scientific reason which I found so fascinating I kept the letter.


HERE YOU ARE'

Easter is what is known in the Liturgical Calendar (the Church Liturgy has a calendar of events) as a "movable feast".
However this may be of interest to you and others also as to how the original date was fixed.


On December 1 1983 the following letter appeared in the Daily Telegraph in London written by Dr C J Humphreys of Jesus College Oxford.
QUOTE
I will not write it in full as it will take a while - here is the gist of it:
The date of the crucifixion has been debated since the 2nd century AD. (NOTE - THE DATE OF THE CRUCIFIXION WILL FIX THE DATE OF THE RESURRECTION AND CONSEQUENTLY EASTER).
My theory presents Biblical evidence that "the moon was turned to blood" following the Crucifixion. (Peter's speech on the Day of Pentecost). This interpretation is supported by a statement from the Report of Pilate, a reasonably early manuscript fragment.
"The moon was turned to blood" has been widely used in ancient literature to describe lunar eclipses since at least 300 B.C. The reason for the blood-red colour is that, although during an eclipse the moon is geometrically in the earth's shadow, red light from the sun reaches it by refraction through the earth's atmosphere, hence the moon appears blood-red.

Using astronomical calculations we can predict future eclipses or determine past eclipses. My calculations, which have been confirmed by Dr Richard Stephenson, an international aurhority on eclipses, show that there was one, and only one, lunar eclipse visible from Jerusalem at Passover time in the period AD 26 / 36 (when Pilate was procurator). This was at moonrise on Friday April 3, A.D. 33.

It therefore seems that after many centuries of uncertainty we can now have some confidence in the pinpointing of April 3, A.D. 33 as the date of the Crucifixion.

END QUOTE







however the reason the modern Easter date is kept is shown here"
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Cassini's Sun calendar in the Basilica of San Petronio

Cassini's Sun calendar in the Basilica of San Petronio

Early European astronomers determined Easter dates

27 March 2002
How do they know it’s Easter? Ever wondered how the exact dates of the Easter break are chosen? Easter Sunday can fall anytime between 22 March and 25 April and, thanks to European observations of the Sun that go back many centuries, the exact date can be predicted as far ahead as 4099 AD.

Back in 325 AD, it was declared that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full Moon following the vernal equinox (the Spring day in the northern hemisphere when the hours of daylight and darkness are equal). Over the next few centuries, theologians and scientists struggled with the problem of calculating these vital dates years in advance. Although they often studied the skies in some detail to help them work out future calendars, this was particularly difficult when working on the premise that the Sun moved around the Earth. Then, in 1651, Giovanni Cassini installed a pinhole camera in the roof of the San Petronio cathedral in Bologna in Italy.

Answer 4

Early on, Easter had no fixed date, like Christmas, because the 15th of Nisan of the Semitic calendar was shifting from date to date on the Julian calendar. Since Christ, the true Paschal Lamb, had been slain on the very day when the Jews, in celebration of their Passover, immolated the figurative lamb, the Jewish Christians in the Orient followed the Jewish method, and commemorated the death of Christ on the 15th of Nisan and His Resurrection on the 17th of Nisan, no matter on what day of the week they fell.

Later, another consideration predominated. Every Sunday of the year was a commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ, which had occurred on a Sunday. Because the Sunday after 14 Nisan was the historical day of the Resurrection, the Church decided that this Sunday would become the Christian feast of Easter. Easter was celebrated in Rome and Alexandria on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

Answer 5

Pagans are not the only one who use lunar base calendars. In fact despite how many of us Westerners think, many cultures and countries still use a variety of different calender systems in Christian as well as non-Christian countries. Many cultures use more than one calendar.

ADD: Despite the strong anti-Semitic tendencies of many of the early Christians, it was decided to celebrate the Christian festival of the Resurrection on the Sunday after Passover. Since the Jews use a Lunar calendar to schedule Passover, so do Christians.

The Pagan Lunar calendar and the Jewish Lunar calendar are only so similar because they are both based on the same cosmic bodies. Back before modern Astronomy there were several discrepancies between many Lunar calendars.

Answer 6

We refer to the year number as y, and use it to calculate the Golden number, g:

g = y mod 19 + 1
Next we calculate the date of the Paschal full moon, that is, the full moon which Easter is the Sunday after. This is done in several stages. First we calculate two values called the solar correction, s, and the lunar correction, l.
s = (y - 1600) div 100 - (y - 1600) div 400
l = (((y - 1400) div 100) × 8) div 25
Next we calculate an uncorrected date for the Paschal full moon, p'; then we apply a minor correction to get the exact date, p, as the number of days after 21st March.
p' = (3 - 11g + s - l) mod 30
if (p' == 29) or (p' == 28 and g > 11) then
p = p' - 1
else
p = p'
Now we need to determine the date of the following Sunday. First we calculate the 'Dominical number', d:
d = (y + (y div 4) - (y div 100) + (y div 400)) mod 7
Note that this is the number from which the Dominical letter is determined, and we calculate d', which is the date on which the first Sunday of the year falls:
d' = (8 - d) mod 7
We already have p, the date of the Paschal full moon in days after 21st March. Next we determine p'' the first date in the year which falls on the same day of the week as the Paschal full moon. First we determine the 'day number' of p with respect to 1st January. This is 31 + 28 + 21 + p = 80 + p. (Note that we can disregard possible occurences of 29th February, because the calculation of d has already taken this into account, and we shall see that these two values will cancel each other out.) p'' is then given by the formula:
p'' = (80 + p) mod 7
= (3 + p) mod 7

The difference between d' (the first Sunday in the year) and p'' (the day of the week when the Paschal full moon falls) gives us the number of days that must be added to p to get the date of the following Sunday, which is Easter Day. There is one further subtlety. This number must lie in the range 1-7, rather than 0-6, since Easter is not allowed to fall on the same day as the Paschal full moon. We first determine x', the difference between d' and p'':
x' = d' - p''
= (8 - d) mod 7 - (3 + p) mod 7
= (8 - d - (3 + p)) mod 7
= (5 - d - p)) mod 7

To force this to lie in the range 1-7, we calculate x
x = (x' - 1) mod 7 + 1
= (4 - d - p)) mod 7 + 1


We can now calculate e, the number of days Easter falls after 21st March:

e = p + x
or
e = p + 1 + (4 - d - p) mod 7
In other words Easter Day is:
if e < 11 then
(e + 21) March
else
(e - 10) April

The first was mainly concerned with the lawfulness of celebrating Easter on a weekday. We read in Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., V, xxiii): "A question of no small importance arose at that time [i.e. the time of Pope Victor, about A.D. 190].

The second stage in the Easter controversy centres round the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325). Granted that the great Easter festival was always to be held on a Sunday, and was not to coincide with a particular phase of the moon, which might occur on any day of the week, a new dispute arose as to the determination of the Sunday itself. The text of the decree of the Council of Nicaea which settled, or at least indicated a final settlement of, the difficulty has not been preserved to us, but we have an important document inserted in Eusebius's "Life of Constantine" (III, xviii sq.).

It was to the divergent cycles which Rome had successively adopted and rejected in its attempt to determine Easter more accurately that the third stage in the paschal controversy was mainly due. The Roman missionaries coming to England in the time of St. Gregory the Great found the British Christians, the representatives of that Christianity which had been introduced into Britain during the period of the Roman occupation, still adhering to an ancient system of Easter-computation which Rome itself had laid aside. The British and Irish Christians were not Quartodecimans, as some unwarrantably accused them of being, for they kept the Easter festival upon a Sunday.

Answer 7

Eater could be fixed by the Jewish calendar...if the original date were known... but The Truth is that the exact date or the event Easter commemorates is not known... nor is the date of the birth of Jesus... it is not God's will that we know them... we are not to worrship dates..

btw... Easter is NOT a pagan holiday... that is an old and worn out argument used only by trolls... there is not a day of the year that does not have some event of some "religion" or cult attached to it.... whatever the "pagans" happened to celebrate on a particular day has nothing to do with the Resurection of Christ.

Answer 8

Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring (Vernal Equinox).

Answer 9

I'll be interested to read the answers here, I could never work out why a christian holiday would be worked out using the moon and the equinox! Very pagan!
Well from the answers, it looks like all us pagans know the answer and many of the christians don't know, and don't seem to want to know!

Answer 10

Jesus was born in the "spring", died about the same time, easter was taken from the pagan holiday 'Eshtarte" which was about the same time as the ressurection...about 40 days later he ascended to heaven, a while later the Holy Spirit came (the day of pentecost) 50 days after the ressurection...cath church changed the dates long time ago because of winter and the long period of being shut in...and 25 dec became birth of christ and so on and so forth...lol...but it's ok, God knows our hearts, you won't die and go to hell for not having it on the exact day...lol.....