Their Ecclesiastical Butts

Today I got this explanation from my Dad for why it is that Easter is so dang early this year. He is routinely very good about imparting his vast wizdom on our family. This particular bit of wizdom is such a terrific and timely bit, I thought I should share it...

Why Easter is so early this year....by Mike Stock:

Happy Easter tomorrow. I enjoyed Easter when I was a child because of the Easter clothes and the egg hunts. Not exactly keeping with the true spirit of Christ floating up to heaven, but that’s a different post.

I began paying attention to the date Easter falls on after Morgan [Karen's brother]was born on Easter Sunday (April 7th) in 1985. He celebrated his 11th birthday on Easter in 1996, but won’t see another Easter birthday until he turns 90. If he’s still around five years later he will celebrate number 95 on Easter Sunday in 2080. He’ll probably be taking a nap at the retirement home when the great grandkids stop by all dressed up with a cake on their way to hunt for eggs. Probably won’t be able to light all those candles because of the pure O2 environment keeping him alive, but it will still be fun seeing the little girls in their new dresses.

This is the earliest Easter we have ever seen, or ever will see in our lifetime. It can occur as early as March 22nd and as late as April 25th, but both dates are extremely rare. Most of us know Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring. Turns out we have made it a bit more complicated with physics (damn scientists). Today we measure the movement of the Sun and Moon with complicated arithmetic, but the Catholic church just looks up in the sky and says, “Ahh, there’s the Moon and it’s right on time.” Then they pull out their Georgian calendars and plunk it down. We call this the “ecclesiastical” full moon and it is what we use to compute Easter. This is a gross simplification of the process, but it is the only way to explain it without getting into a discussion of tabular lunation. Computers have simplified the process of determining ecclesiastical Easter with a (relatively) simple algorithm. I prefer to find a website that has already tabulated the data and just scan the page.

Because of the differences in the astronomical and ecclesiastical movement of the Moon, and the differences in calendars around the world, Easter sometimes falls on different days in the east than in the western world. The one thing we all seem to agree on is the blessed constant of March 21st. That gives me hope that one day east and west will sit down and just pick a day. It could be a day of deep historical and religious significance, or they could just pull it out of their ecclesiastical butts. How about the 3rd Sunday in April? That gets my vote. Spring will be in full bloom, or at least getting started in most areas, and you improve your odds of having nice weather for the egg hunt.

It’s all about the egg hunt… Happy Easter everybody!