I pray Easter never becomes a fixed date
by Quentin Letts, Mailonline:
[…] Some people find it odd that the most important Christian festival of the year does not have a set date.
Other major national events such as bank holidays, the Queen’s official birthday and Remembrance Sunday are pegged to easily predicted dates.
But Easter bounces about like a pinball, falling any time between March 22 and April 25. This year it is April 1; last year it was April 16, next year it will be April 21.
Would it help if I told you that, since the year 325 AD, Easter Day has been the Sunday following the first full moon — known as the ecclesiastical paschal full moon — that falls after the vernal equinox [the beginning of spring]?
It wouldn’t? I can’t say I am altogether surprised, but that is why there is disparity in the dates from year to year.
In recent days there have been calls for the Government to put an end to the uncertainty over Easter’s date.
The letters column of one newspaper has boiled with debate about bringing into force a 1928 Act of Parliament which tried to root Easter Day to a smaller date-range —between April 9 and April 15.
That Act has never been implemented because the different Christian churches could not agree on the measure.
Easter dates are not, however, decided by a committee of Church of England bishops sitting round a table at Lambeth Palace, peering at their diaries and asking each other ‘which Sunday in March/April is good for you, Derek?’
If only it were that simple.
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