please empty your brain below

It's not the astronomical full moon, but the ecclesiastical full moon, calculated by tables, according to wiki. The difference in "full moon" dates can be up to two days, so Easter might not fall on the date you expect from looking at the phase of the moon.
Wonder when the clocks changed on a Easter Sunday before or will ever do so again?
They last changed on Easter day in 2013, and will next change on Easter Day in 2024. The clocks go forward on the last Sunday in March, and we can work out from DG's calendar that when Easter is in March, it's nearly always on the last Sunday of the month (except in 1940 and 2008 it seems...).
There are also not so Christian places, like Hong Kong, that observe Easter every year. I wonder what would happen if the churches agree on fixing the date. If HK doesn't follow suit then the March Easter thing may still linger for a while, but I suspect the authorities would instead scrap observing Easter altogether (as a "de-colonization" measure)
Changing Easter to a fixed calendar date will be another change that the lessens our links with the past.

Ruminating last week on the variety of possible dates for Easter led me to this site which reveals that no-one reading DG's post today is likely to see Easter again on 27th.March, in 141 years time.
Last year I celebrated Easter twice, as I was in Romania at the time of the Orthodox Church's Easter, which last year fell a week later than it did in the Western church. Easter is calculated exactly the same way, except that the ecclesiastical Full Moon is calculated according to the Julian calendar, which is now thirteen days adrift from the Gregorian. This year the Orthodox Easter will be in five weeks time, on May 1st. (Next year both churches will celebrate it on April 16th)

The other alternative would be to de-couple the public holidays from Easter, leaving the Christians to celebrate in their own time. After all, only Good Friday is a religious public holiday, Easter Monday is a wholly civic concoction.
A fixed date for 'shops closed Sunday' would be a good thing, the August Bank Holiday used to wander about too due to political interference in the second half of the 60s, but they fixed it again in the 70s.
And this is why I love this blog!

Now tell me, how many Easter Sunday's have occurred on the same Sunday as the clocks going forward?
@Geofftech Until 1995, the clocks changed on the third Sunday in March, or the second if the third was Easter Day (Easter cannot fall earlier than March 21st, so such an event would be rare indeed - it will next occur in 2285!)

But in the interests of European harmonisation, they now change on the last Sunday of March, whether that is Easter or not (at also happens at 2am GMT,1am BST, rather than an hour later as hitherto, again to match the change in CET)
Thus the only years in which the clocks have changed in the UK on Easter morning have been 1997, 2002, 2005 and 2016. (in 2008 Easter fell on March 23rd, and the clocks changed on March 30th)
April is too late. It's a long old dreary time between New Years Day and Easter without a cheery Bank Holiday. It should be kept as the last Sunday in March.
On the one hand, I quite like having Easter as a moveable feast - but on the other, there would be something quite pleasing about being able to make use of the Easter Act 1928 to fix the date. I'd imagine it would set some sort of record for length of time between a law being enacted and coming into force.
I agree with Agent Z,that March would be a better time for a fixed date.
Not only for the reasons they stated, but because of the closeness of the May Day bank holiday if it were in mid April.
While it's nice to have a number of bank holidays to look forward to in the spring, they can be a bit like buses and all come together in some years, especially when also dealing with the school holidays!
For a lot more Date-of-Easter bloggery, click on '2008' in the opening paragraph.
@Agent Z - if your bank holidays are "cheery" you are fortunate to live a different life to me!
@Frank F - I tend to agree with you. Working shifts invariably means bank holidays are spent at work. Still I suppose that's better than joining the inevitable crowds and queues at the various shopping centres.

(Are they still officially called bank holidays, or rather public holidays now?)
The last time Easter fell on my birthday (6th April) was in 1980, meaning an epic double haul of presents and eggs, but it's not scheduled to do so again until 2042, by which time I'll probably have carked it!
Whatever the weather I hope you have a Happy Easter.
As a Church-goer, and general setting up dogsbody, I'd rather they didn't fix Easter to the last Sunday in March as I also like my sleep and there's much more to set up (it seems) on Easter Sunday! (not to mention the occasional Sunrise service...) So, if they do fix it (which I don't think should be done as it will lose its link to the Jewish Passover festival), definitely an April one. I also understand the thoughts of people here about there being a long time between New Year's and Easter without a bank or public holiday [1], so may I suggest the first Sunday in April?

@Matt: I also used to have a fair number of Easter Sunday birthdays (was born on Easter Sunday), but looking at the table I'm going to have to wait until 2059 for my next one.

[1]: @Tim: I believe there is a difference in a Public Holiday and a Bank Holiday in that - to put it simply and no doubt one of the pedants here will correct me! - a Bank Holiday is compulsory (at least in the financial sector) while a Public Holiday is not. Or something like that.
If we want Easter later in the year, we could always rejoin the Orthodox church in using the Julian calendar for religious observances, viewing the last 264 years as a Popish aberration. This year, the Orthodox Easter Monday happens to be a Bank Holiday in the UK, being May 2nd!

(Switching to the Orthodox calendar would also give an extra thirteen days for Christmas shopping, and would mean my Christmas cards have a chance of arriving on time!)
Perhaps it be good if the clocks going forward and the Easter Sunday were combined, thus giving (most) people a extra day (Bank Holiday Monday) to adjust? Wonder if that is a good idea?
Can I wish to all a Happy Holiday, enjoy! Whatever it's called and whenever it falls. 😉
Pedants' corner:-
@timbo (at 9:26)
1am GMT = 2am BST, surely?
@Bob L-S

Of course. (I wondered why everyone had started the Easter service had already finished when I got there.............)
I'm FURIOUS that we could have sorted this all out in 1750.
I doubt we could have sorted it all out in 1752. All that happened then was that the UK came into line with the rest of western Europe. The calculation method for Easter goes back to Dionysius Exiguus in the 7th century. The AD system for counting years was devised as no more than an arithmetical convenience in order to aid these calculations
@Al_S
"Good Friday is a religious public holiday"
The problem with significant religious dates falling on weekdays is that they tend to get overlooked. e.g Ash Wednesday and Ascension day (the latter always falls on a Thursday, being forty days after Easter) are as religiously significant as Christmas.
There are many countries in Europe which have a public holiday on the latter.










TridentScan | Privacy Policy