Monday, March 17, 2008

An Answer to Easter


I was at a dinner gathering and someone asked, "How do they come up with the date for Easter because sometimes it's in April and sometimes it's in March?"

I found this answer at The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod page. The short of it is that it is based on a decision determined by the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325: "the churches of the world finally got together and agreed on this rule: Easter Day shall always fall on the Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox." The article goes on to say that this opened it's own can of worms because which calendar do you use to determine when that first full moon after the Spring Equinox actually occurs? The one used by Eastern Orthodox churches or the one used by Western Orthodox religions? There's a mathematical algorithm you can use to determine the date (as used by Western religions), but I'll let you go to the site to enjoy figuring that out.

Interesting, though, eh?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Firefox was resizing my windows and it just took me this long to figure out how to fix it.

I just wanted to say that I did find that information interesting. ;) Thanks for sharing it. :)