Just realised this year’s Easter holidays fall in March, next month.
Now, religiously, Ramadhan (for example) is determined by the sighting of the moon by an upper cache of believers.
Who dictates our Easter holidays and which criteria is used?
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Ask Mrs Mureithi, she’s the guru on matters to do with Christianity.
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and @Acoustic is the …er…fanatic?
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Jehova Witnesses like me do not recognize Easter as a Christian holiday. Mainly because 1)it has pagan origins and 2)it isn’t among the religious festivals that God orders us to observe.
I however know that the date is fixed based on the movement of the moon or the March equinox. Though its predictable unlike the Muslim Ramadan. Check Computus.
its normally the first sunday after the vernal equinox , BTW do you knew that the introduction of leap years and the Julian calender as we know it were designed to make sure that Easter does not regress and end up falling on the same day as christmas
now that you’re a JW Wyatt is your definition of the Trinity?
Anyway Christian believe in death and reserection of christ. .it’s the core of Christian religion
We do not believe in The Trinity.
It wasn’t that predictable until 1582, in that year the vernal equinox was 10 days early and based on math projections, pope Gregory realized that at some point it would someday fall on the same day with Christmas thus throwing the entire christian foundation into a spin since Easter is the core of Christianity. pope Gregory with the aid of mathematicians of the time fixed it to what we have today by re-adjusting the number of leap years but this would still have meant Easter was going to be celebrated too early and would not match the yearly Catholic cycle. to fix this, he further later that year cut off 10 days of that year, after October 4th the following day was October 15th . now needless to say this caused some major grief for employees, employers, tenants and landlords.
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Very true. Why was the date fixed based on the vernal equinoxes and not any other phenomena?
Interesting.
Those were the supreme rulers who could do anything without opposition from anyone, ata Obama Hawezi jenga pyramid eti azikwe hapo wacha kujaribu kukata ata siku moja kwa calendar
I could write a book on this because its an area that always puzzled me since i was a kid (probably read every book there is on this topic), however in a nutshell and brief. it all goes back to the Jews and rabbis, they had a version of equinox which they used to celebrate the Passover and by the way they are the ones who invented the liturgical year , i think they used to call it paschal full moon or something. now Christians at the time did not want to be tied down to rabbi terminologies for christian events actually you can say Christians were the first protesters (did you see what i did there : ) ), the church in Asia Minor decided they were going to come up with their own terminologies for christian festivals and that’s how they ended up moving it from the 14th of July or august (could fall on different months depending on year), now remember they also had to factor in some ordinary time so they did their math backwards ( days x - (6 weeks of lent + 1 day) = palm Sunday) and they had to ensure they had some ordinary time between Christmas and lent and that’s how they settled on the vernal equinox, it was the only logical event (astronomically observable) to avoid messing the entire liturgical year.
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Easter holidays always happens during the Passover. Kwa wale wageni kwa neno, huu ni ule wakati ambapo wana wa israeli walihepa kifo huko misri baada ya kuambiwa wachinje mbuzi na wapake kwa milango yao ndio waokolewe na Mungu na waelekezwe na Musa Canani. This day have been celebrated every year by the said believers from then to today. Is also happens that its the same day Jesus was crucified. This is after He took 40 days in the wilderness praying and fasting (read lent) after which he came to Jerusalem on Sunday (Say Palm Sunday), and was crucified on Friday (Say good Friday). In conclusion, the period is determined by the Passover…(Whichever formula they use to put it in the Gregorian calendar)
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Question is, does Easter celebrate Israelites’ freedom from slavery, or Christ’s death? Or both? If both, did the two events occur on same dates?
And why should Christians celebrate that pascha thing? Jesus was very clear that the only thing we should observe was his death, through what we call holy communion. And it should be often, not once an year.
Good questions @aviator , the only problem we have currently is that there is no universally accepted christian doctrine. Evey church has its own believe on the same, for example, The Catholics celebrate the Journey all the way from Lent–Palm Sunday (entry to Jerusalem)–The death–The resurrection. Others just cerebrate The death and Resurrection only. The Passover thing is only cerebrated by the Jews only (To the best of my knowledge). As for the dates for His death, they are supposed to coincide since Has crucified the same day for Passover.
if you look at the history on both of them, you realize they are two separate events, the Jews will celebrate Passover which also happens on the day Jesus celebrated the last supper (first day of passover )which was the day before he got crucified (Easter start). now as per previous post, the Passover is a Jewish celebration/term and latter day Christians tend to suppress it because the entire Christianity is based on Easter, why create side shows during the main event
…why create side shows during the main event
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Well, that’s where we say, everyone is free to decide on which one is relevant in terms of conviction or belief to celebrate, but creating side shows is wrong. And by the way, it,s very easy to know which one you are celebrating by looking at the the events you observe.
For those who believe in judgement, will the Supreme Being judge us on which dates we commemorated these events? Is it written in the Bible, Qur’an, Gita… Or will judgement be based on what you believed, how you treated fellow human beings and yourself… Whether Easter comes in March or October, the main thing I believe is to remember and appreciate the significance of the occasion.
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