Happy Easter 2021 – He is risen. He is risen indeed.
Posted By RichC on April 4, 2021
For Christians, there’s no more celebrated day than Easter … for without a risen Savior, no other day in Christianity would matter. He is risen indeed!
BUT … why does the day always change? I mean, we’ve assigned December 25th to celebrate Christmas and most other holidays on our calendar at least fall in the same month? So why does Easter have to move around so much? Like a birthday, etc … there must have been “one” day on the calendar that Christ rose … although it was a Sunday. Hmm?
Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon.
A look at some Jewish and Christian history helps to shine a “little” more light on the subject, but reading a BBC magazine article makes one realize just how politically charged and difficult it was for churches, let alone governments and countries, to come to an agreement on when to celebrate Easter … even if they were all using our relatively modern (1582) Gregorian calendar. It’s no wonder they couldn’t come up with one fixed date.
I’m sure that I’m not the only one who still struggles with the March through April wide span of days … the earliest being March 22nd and the latest being April 25th. That is quite the spread … but why?
It has to do with the moon …
The moon’s cycles played an important role in ancient times, which is how the date of the Jewish holiday of Passover was determined. Eventually, Christians decided to observe Easter during the same time as Passover, with early celebrations occurring on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring.
The Paschal Full Moon and Easter
The date of Easter—a moveable holiday—coincides with the Paschal Full Moon. However, the Paschal Full Moon may not be the exact same date as the actual astronomical full moon. The date can vary as much as two days from that of the actual full moon, although the two intersect more often than not.
