Let’s not dumb down the little surprises of Easter falling early or late
Hardly had we managed to extract the last Christmas tree needle from the hearthrug and gasped through the dark days of Dry January than the pancakes were tossed and it was vale to carne for the six weeks of Lent running up to an early Easter. It all came in a bit of a rush. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to have Easter on the same date every year, like Christmas?
That’s what the Archbishop of Canterbury wants, not just for the Church of England but for the world. He’s had talks about it with the Pope and with Pope Tawadros II, the head of the Coptic Church. Surprisingly, they all seem in favour, but I bet it won’t come to anything, and I really don’t think it should.
Nothing could be simpler than predicting the date of Easter. It is the first Sunday after the full moon falling on or after the spring equinox. We’ve just had the spring equinox, when for most of us the snow was finally vanquished. As for the moon, it has been quietly waxing away in quite an attractive-looking crescent shape this week, and half the cheese will be visible today before it gets all gibbous, like a hammered shilling, next week and then bright and full just in time to usher in Easter fire and light and chocolate for April Fool’s Day.
Unlike arrangements for other global festivals, such as Eid al-fitr at the end of Ramadan, the moon does not actually have to be sighted before Easter kicks off. It’s taken on trust and can be predicted for the rest of history. True, there are little quirks which mean that some people happily tuck into the roast lamb while others are mortifying their own flesh with strict fasts. That all depends on the way the lunar calendar fits together with the solar calendar. It is also widely assumed that the spring equinox falls on March 21, which this year it did not.
Such wavelets of irregularity account for the occasional coincidence and the frequent divergence of Easter and Passover. The first Easter was tied to Passover. This year Passover begins on March 30, Good Friday. Passover is always on the 15th of the month of Nisan, a lunar month kept moored to the solar year by the clever intercalation of an extra month seven times every 19 years. Easy.
The British have reason to be proud of knowing what day it is, because St Bede the Venerable had the best brain for calendars in the whole eighth-century world. He stood on the shoulders of a dwarf, in the shape of poor old Dionysius Exiguus, who despite inventing AD, got Easter wrong. Bede also got a leg up from Abbess Hilda of Whitby, where a synod in 664 fixed the rules for setting Easter, in negotiations that make Brexit look like a game of music chairs.
These forebears of ours were not in the least rude, but they had no satellites or computers. Things today are still as irregularly regular: tides and earthquakes, bee-swarms and solstices. If we can’t accommodate a slightly variable annual festival, we’re distancing ourselves from reality.
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