Sunday is Easter... But Why?

Sunday is Easter. This is the traditional time to remember in a special way the resurrection of Christ. Granted, all sorts of traditions not associated with the Bible story have found their way into the observance of Easter. (You are not going to find anything in your concordance about bunnies and colored eggs). Not coming from a church tradition that really observes Easter as a religious festival, I was always a bit confused about WHEN Easter took place. I imagine that people who come from a tradition in which Easter is observed are a bit confused about that as well. It seems that Easter comes at different and even random times each spring. I thought the following excerpt from an article by Steven L. Ware in Christianity Today might help those who may be wondering about the date of Easter.

The question of the proper date for Easter—the most important festival on the Christian calendar—is another of those fascinating and complicated odysseys in the history of Christianity. It begins at the Council of Nicea in 325, where, after settling the Arian controversy, bishops debated the correct formula for determining the date of Easter. The Eastern bishops (those from Eastern Europe and western Asia) preferred scheduling Easter in conjunction with the Jewish Passover celebration, because the Gospels place the death and resurrection of Jesus during that time. Also, since most Eastern Christians had come from Jewish roots, this practice gave them continuity with past traditions. The Western bishops, however, disagreed with the Eastern practice, because few Jews lived in their regions. They favored a date in conjunction with the solar beginning of spring, which was the time of many pagan celebrations.

The Nicene Council itself did not resolve the matter, other than stipulating that Easter should be celebrated on a Sunday. Shortly after the council, however, Emperor Constantine sent a letter to all Christian leaders not present at council encouraging a uniform celebration of Easter that ignored the Jewish calendar, since Jews had largely rejected Christ. No formula for determining the date of Easter was universally accepted in the West until, under the influence of the Venerable Bede (c.673-735), the method of Dionysius Exiguus (c.500-550) was widely adopted. This system scheduled Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

Linking the schedule of Easter to the beginning of spring didn't completely solve the problem, however, because the Julian calendar, in use from the Roman era until the late sixteenth century, had a small flaw: its solar year of 365 and one-fourth days was 11 minutes, 17 and one-half seconds too long. This seemingly tiny error adds up to slightly more than three days in the span of 400 years. That is why, despite learned astronomers' best calculations, the church found its Easter calendar in need of adjustment on a regular basis. That is also why, when the calendar was reformed under the approval of Pope Gregory XIII in October 1582, it was necessary to eliminate ten entire days to correct the error (the day after October 4 was declared to be October 15).

Even with the Gregorian Reform, the date for Easter can vary widely, since it is still partly dependent on lunar cycles. The advantage of the Gregorian Reform, especially after it was adopted in England in 1752, was that it facilitated an accurate and uniform celebration of Easter across the entire West. Occasionally, the Western celebration of Easter even coincides with the Eastern Orthodox date. (Their Easter is still calculated by the Julian calendar, and their calculation of the paschal full moon is five days later than the astronomical full moon—thus the Eastern and Western dates can vary by as much as five weeks.)

OK, so now we all know when Easter will be each year! Am I the only one who thinks it would have been easier just to keep Passover and Easter linked?

But why is there a day called Easter? Yes, Easter was one of those pagan holidays that early Christians appropriated and linked to the resurrection. No, Easter does not appear in the Bible (unless you use the KJV and don't realize that Acts 12:4 incorrectly translates the Greek word pascha (passover) as "Easter." And no, we are not told to observe Easter as a special holiday. But then we are not told to have VBS each summer, gospel meetings each fall and special themes on Mother's Day or Memorial Day. Like all these things, Easter is a tradition (and one that has been around for a very long time). Traditions are not bad... they are unavoidable!

Traditions can be repeated so often that they become part of the way that we do church. That is OK as long as we don't bind them on others or allow the purpose of the tradition to become lost. Some churches have been building toward Easter through the forty days of Lent. Other churches won't do anything Sunday to mark it as Easter... except that their kids will be dressed up in new outfits and OD'd on chocolate eggs and marshmallow peeps! At Denbigh, we will split the difference-- our service will revolve around the resurrection (songs, texts, and the sermon), and we will supply the chocolate and marshmallows in our (traditional) Easter egg hunt.

What is important is not the specific choice we make about what to do about special church days. What is important is that we honor God with our choices. That is Paul's point in Romans 14. We're not faithful because we are so Biblical that we refrain from observing Easter. We are not faithful because we are so enlightened that we can observe Easter and still be biblical. We are faithful because whatever decision we make is made simply to honor God.