When is Easter?

The coming of spring into our life is accompanied not byonly a new degeneration of nature, but also a large number of folk, state and religious holidays. It perfectly raises the mood and tone of the population after the winter cold. Easter or the Resurrection of Christ is the most important holiday for Christians. The most solemn divine service and the maximum scope of folk festivities occur when they celebrate Easter.

Symbols and customs of Christian Easter

The name of the holiday came from the Hebrew word"Pesach", which means "to pass." The Christian Passover honors the story of Jesus' betrayal, his crucifixion and miraculous resurrection with his sense. This explains the traditional Easter greeting, which is customary to say to each other on this day: "Christ is Risen!", The answer is "Truly risen!", Followed by a three-fold kissing procedure. When celebrating Easter, it is customary to exchange holiday symbols.

The traditional symbols of Easter bear the meaning of renewal, light and life. These are streams, fire, cakes, eggs and rabbits.

For the people, the day is near triumphafter the preceding Great Lent, the time of abstinence. Traditionally, all the holidays that happened at that time, including family holidays, were postponed to the day of the celebration of Easter.

On which day is Easter celebrated?

The most difficult for the modern OrthodoxChristian it is to withstand the Easter Lent before Easter and determine when Easter is in the new year. Everyone knows that the Resurrection of Christ is not celebrated on a certain day, but falls on the spring period from April to May.

Easter must necessarily fall on the firstSunday after the day of the spring full moon. This is the first spring full moon after the day of the vernal equinox. The date is determined by the ratio of the lunar and solar calendars and the exact day of the week. This is the complexity of the calculation.

Christianity is not unanimous in the celebration. The day when Easter is celebrated in Orthodoxy, rarely coincides with a Catholic celebration. This is due to the fact that the Orthodox conduct calculations on the Alexandria Paschalia (the method for calculating the day of Easter), based on the Julian calendar. Catholics use the Gregorian Paschalia for their calculations. Different Paskhalis determine the different date of the church full moon and the difference of solar calendars. Because of this, in almost half the cases, Catholics celebrate Easter a week earlier, but coincidence of dates also happens.

The Jewish Passover

The Jewish Easter symbolizes the beginning of spring andfreedom, since it is connected with the exodus of Jews from Egypt. It is called "Pesach", and the date when Passover passes with the Jews, defines exclusively the Jewish calendar. The calendar is lunisolar and the months in it begin strictly in the new moon. The Jewish Easter is celebrated on the 14th day (full moon) of the first month of the Jewish calendar - Nisan. In relation to the Gregorian calendar, Nisan falls in April-May. The specific chronology of the Jews leads to the celebration of Easter in the same period as the Christian Easter, but with a difference in the exact date. When the Jews celebrate Easter, the celebration lasts a whole week.