Easter
Next: March 28, 2027
Spring, and a story of starting again.
The story
Where it comes from
Easter is the oldest and most important Christian festival, marking the resurrection of Jesus. Its date moves because it is tied to the moon: the Council of Nicaea in 325 set it as the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox, so it falls between 22 March and 25 April in the Western calendar. Eastern Orthodox churches compute it from the Julian calendar and usually celebrate on a different Sunday.
How it's celebrated
Church services from Good Friday through Easter Sunday, then a family meal, with lamb in much of Europe. Decorated eggs are the shared symbol: dyed red in Greece and Eastern Europe, hidden for children in Germany, Britain and America (the Easter Bunny is a German import), rolled down hills in Scotland and on the White House lawn. Hot cross buns, chocolate eggs and simnel cake are British and Australian staples.
Did you know
- The English word 'Easter' is unusual; almost every other European language uses a word derived from Pesach, the Hebrew for Passover (Pâques, Pascua, Pasqua).
- The Easter date was so hard to calculate that medieval monks wrote entire books, called computus, on the arithmetic.
- Australians increasingly give a chocolate Easter Bilby, an endangered native marsupial, instead of a bunny, since rabbits are an introduced pest there.
The greeting
Happy Easter!
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