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To: Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>, Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup 2 <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
Subject: The history of Easter (Encyclopedia Version)
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 14:44:56 -0800
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From: Peggy Jones
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: The history of Easter

>From Peggy:
***************

Recently I had a Pastor's wife ask me why Easter and Passover do not
always fall in the same week. I pulled this article from the Funk &
Wagnells New Encyclopedia 1988 Edition (pages 432-434). I'm including
the whole article because I personally found them enlightning. I'm
only typing what was contained in the article. The reason for sending
this is not to argue Easter and Passover (for which there is no
arguement) but only for information purposes. I have found very few
people who even knew that the two festivals did not coinside. hmmmm?

Easter-

Annual festival commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and
the principal feast of the Christian year. It is celebrated on a Sunday on
varying dates between March 22 and April 25 and is therefore called
the movable feast. The dates of several other ecclesiastical
festivals, extending over a period between Septuagesima Sunday (the
ninth Sunday before Easter) and the first Sunday of Advent, are fixed
in relation to the date of Easter.

Connected with the observance of Easter are the 40-day penitential
season of Lent, beginnning on Ash Wednesday and concluding at midnight
of Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday; Holy week, commencing
on Palm Sunday, including Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion, and
terminating with Holy Saturday; and the Octave of Easter, extending
from Easter Sunday through the following Sunday. During the Otave of
Easter in early Christian times, the newly baptized wore white
garments, while being the liturgical color of Easter and signifying
light, purity, and joy.

Pre-Christian Tradition-

Easter, a Christian festival, embodies many pre-Christian traditions.
The origin of its name is unknown. Scholars, however, accepting the
derivation proposed by the 8th-century English scholar St. Bede,
believe it probably comes from Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon name of a
Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, to whom was dedicated a
month corresponding to April. Her festival was celebrated on the day
of the vernal equinoz; traditions associated with the festival survive
in the Easter rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in colored easter
eggs, originally painted with bright colors to represent the sunlight
of spring, and used in Easter-egg rolling contests or given as gifts.

Such festivals, and the stories and legends that explain their
origin, were common in ancient religions. A Greek legend tells of the
return of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, goddess of the earth, from
the underworld to the light of day; her return symbolized to the
ancient Greeks the resurrection of life in the spring after the
desolation of winter. Many ancient peoples shared similar legends. The
Phrygians believed that their omnipotent deity went to sleep at the
time of the winter solstice, and they performed ceremonies with music
and dancing at the spring equinox to awaken him. The Christian
festival of Easter probably embodies a number of converging
traditions; most scholars emphasize the original relation of Easter to
the Jewish festival of Passover, or Pesach, from which is derived
Pasch, another name for Easter. The early Christians, many of whom
were of Jewish origin, were brought up in the Hebrew tradition and
regarded Easter as a new feature of the Passover festival, a
commemoration of the advent of the Messiah as foretold by the
prophets.

The Dating of Easter -

According to the New Testament, Christ was crucified on the eve of
Passover and shortly afterward rose from the dead. In consequence, the
Easter festival commemorated Christ's resurrection. In time, a serious
difference over the date of the Easter festival arose among
Christians. Those of Jewish origin celebrated the resurrection
immediately following the Passover festival, which, according to their
Babylonian lunar calendar, fell on the evening of the full moon (the
14th day in the month of Nisan, the first month of the year); by their
reckoning, Easter, from year to year, fell on different days of the
week.

Christians of Gentile origin, however, wished to commemorate the
resurrection on the first day of the week, Sunday; by their method,
Easter occured on the same day of the week, but from year to year it
fell on different dates.

An important historical result of the difference in reckoning the
date of Easter was that the Christian Churches in the East, which were
closer to the birthplace of the new religion and in which old
traditions were strong, observed Easter according to the date of the
Passover festival. The churches of the West, descendants of
Greek-Roman civilization, celebrated Easter on a Sunday.

Rulings of the Council of Nicaea on the Date of Easter -

Constantine I, Roman emperor, convoked the Council of Nicaea in 325.
The council unanimously ruled that the Easter festival should be
celebrated throughout the Christian world on the first Sunday after
the full moon following the vernal equinox; and that if the full moon
should occur on a Sunday and thereby coincide with the Passover
festival, Easter should be commmemorated on the Sunday following.
Coincidence of the feast of Easter and Passover was thus avoided.

The Council of Nicaea also decided that the calendar date of Easter
was to be calculated at Alexandria, then the pricipal astronomical
center of the world. The accurate determination of the date, however,
proved an impossible task in view of the limited knowledge of the
4th-century world. The principal astronomical problem involved was the
descrepancy, called the epact, between the solar year and the lunar
year. The chief calendric problem was a gradually increasing
discrepancy between the true astronomical year and the Julian calendar
then in use.

Later Dating Methods -

Ways of fixing the date of the feast tried by the church proved
unsatisfactory, and Easter was celebrated on different dates in
different parts of the world. In 387, for example, the dates of Easter
in France and Egypt were 35 days apart. About 465, the church adopted
a system of calculation proposed by the astronmer Victorinus (fl. 5th
cent.), who had been commissioned by Pope Hilarius (r. 461-68) to
reform the calendar and fix the date of Easter. Elements of his method
are still in use. Refusal of the British and Celtic Christian churches
to adopt the proposed changes led to a bitter dispute between them and
Rome in the 7th century.

Reform of the Julian calendar in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, through
adoption of the Gregorian calendar, eliminated much of the difficulty
in fixing the date of Easter and in arranging the ecclesiastical year;
since 1752, when the Gregorian calendar was also adopted in Great
Britain and Ireland, Easter has been celebrated on the same day in the
Western part of the Christian world. The Eastern churches, however,
which did not adopt the Gregorian calendar, commemorate Easter on a
Sunday either preceding or following the date observed in the West.
Occasionally the dates coincide; the most recent times were in 1865
and 1963.

Because the Easter holiday affects a varied number of secular
affairs in many countries, it has long been urged as a matter of
convenience that the movable dates of the festival be either narrowed
in range or replaced by a fixed date in the manner of Christmas. In
1923 the problem was referred to the Holy See, which has found no
canonical objections to the proposed reform. In 1928 the British
Parliament enacted a measure allowing the Church of England to
commemorate Easter of the first Sunday after the second Saturday in
April. Despite these steps toward reform, Easter continues to be a
movable feast.

In HIM
pjones

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