While defined as a Christian holiday, Easter has many of its roots in the traditions and rituals of the pagan people who inhabited the United Kingdom before its wide spread conversion to the Christian faith. Scholars believe that Easter was named for “Eostre”, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of the spring. The date of Easter hops around each year – typically between March 22 and April 25. In short, the holiday falls on the first Sunday after the full Moon on or following the spring equinox.

This article on how Easter is celebrated in the UK was updated by the Great British Mag editorial team on 17 March 2021.The saltus and the seven extra 30-day months were largely hidden by being located at the points where the Julian and lunar months begin at about the same time. The extra months commenced on 1 January (year 3), 2 September (year 5), 6 March (year 8), 3 January (year 11), 31 December (year 13), 1 September (year 16), and 5 March (year 19). [33] [34] The sequence number of the year in the 19-year cycle is called the " golden number", and is given by the formula To subtract by 1 is exactly what is required for a normal year – since the weekday slips one day forward we should compensate one day less to arrive at the correct weekday (i.e. Sunday). For a leap year, b becomes 0 and 2 b thus is 0 instead of 8 – which under mod 7, is another subtraction by 1 – i.e., a total subtraction by 2, as the weekdays after the leap day that year slide forward by two days.

Grumel, V. (1958). La chronologie (in French). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. OCLC 4260118. Pope Gregory XIII (24 February 1582). "Inter Gravissimas". Archived from the original on 13 February 2006 . Retrieved 9 August 2017. The Expl.Suppl. of 2013 on p.599 instead specifies 70,499,175 lunations, without explanation or reference. This number appears to be the truncated value of dividing 2,081,882,250 days by 29.53059, which is a rounded value for the lunation length found in the table at the top of p.587 . So the number of 70,499,175 would be an estimate of the actual number of lunations in a 5.7Myr period, and not the number of New Moons actually counted by the Gregorian lunar calendar over its full cycle. Kekis, Theoharis. "The Orthodox Church Calendar" (PDF). Cyprus Action Network of America. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 November 2012 . Retrieved 11 March 2012. This Nisan 15 rule affected two Swedish years, 1778 and 1798, that instead of being one week before the Gregorian Easter, were delayed one week so they were on the same Sunday as the Gregorian Easter. Germany's astronomical Easter was one week before the Gregorian Easter in 1724 and 1744. [27] Sweden's astronomical Easter was one week before the Gregorian Easter in 1744, but one week after it in 1805, 1811, 1818, 1825, and 1829. [27]You will also notice buns in the shops called hot cross buns, which are eaten to celebrate Easter. These small, lightly sweetened and spiced bread-like buns contain raisins or currants and are eaten toasted with butter smothered on them. Kothe, Jochen. "Berichtigung ze dem aufsatze". Astronomische Abhandlungen[ Astronomical Treatises] (in German). Archived from the original on 12 July 2012 . Retrieved 9 August 2017. Peterson, Michael D. (2015). "Fasting: Eastern Christian". In Johnston, William M.; Kleinhenz, Christopher (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Monasticism. Routledge. p.468. ISBN 978-1-57958-090-2. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023 . Retrieved 21 March 2023. This is why even now Easter is calculated differently by the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches to the Catholic and other western Churches,” said theology and religion Professor Emma Loosely, from the University of Exeter. Audette, Rodolphe (9 December 2007). "Dionysius Exiguus – Liber de Paschate". Archived from the original on 15 April 2021 . Retrieved 26 June 2021.

Easter, one of the oldest Christian traditions, is the celebration of the last week of Jesus’ life, his death, and his resurrection. For Christians, Easter symbolises the dawn of a new life and the high point of the Christian calendar. a b c d e f Davison, Michael E. (1980). "The Frequency Distribution of the Dates of Easter". The Irish Astronomical Journal. 14: 156–164. Bibcode: 1980IrAJ...14..156D. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023 . Retrieved 17 May 2022. The decision on how and when Easter should fall each year was made by the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the first major church council. Why did the Council of Nicaea need to intervene? Zeyer, Klaus Peter (2020). "Häufigkeit von Osterparadoxien: Negative Äquinoktialparadoxien der Jahre 2353 und 2372 als seltenste Variante". Regiomontanusbote. 33: 5–10.

Holy Week

The lunar cycle of Anatolius, according to the tables in De ratione paschali, included only two bissextile (leap) years every 19years, so could not be used by anyone using the Julian calendar, which had four or five leap years per lunar cycle. [12] [13] Anatolius of Laodicea, " Paschal Canons quoted by Eusebius", The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, archived from the original on 14 April 2021 , retrieved 13 April 2021 . The day and night of the equinox are of approximately equal length. As neither the calendar year (365 days) nor the cycle of the phases of the Moon (29.5 days) divide evenly by the seven-day week, the date of Easter Sunday can move irregularly by up to a month, from between late March and late April.” Occasionally Orthodox churches celebrate Easter on the same date as Catholics and other western churches (Photo: Getty Images) Why do different churches celebrate Easter on different days? The expression 6 d works the same way. Increasing d by some number y indicates that the full moon occurs y days later this year, and hence we should compensate y days less. Adding 6 d is mod 7 the same as subtracting d, which is the desired operation. Thus, again, we do subtraction by adding under modulo arithmetic. In total, the variable e contains the step from the day after the day of the full moon to the nearest following Sunday, between 0 and 6 days ahead. The constant N provides the starting point for the calculations for each century and depends on where 1 January, year 1 was implicitly located when the Gregorian calendar was constructed.

Book of Common Prayer. "Tables and Rules". Archived from the original on 27 May 2021 . Retrieved 26 June 2021.

When is Easter?

Doggett, L.E. (1992). Seidelmann, P.Kenneth (ed.). Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac. Washington: U.S. Naval Observatory. p.582. ISBN 0-935702-68-7.