Apr 24. Commemorates the Resurrection of Christ. Most joyous festival of the Christian year. The date of Easter, a movable feast, is derived from the lunar calendar: the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after Mar 21—always between Mar 22 and Apr 25. The Council of Nicaea (AD 325) prescribed that Easter be celebrated on the Sunday after Passover, as that feast’s date had been established in Jesus’s time. After 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar, Orthodox Christians continued to use the Julian calendar, so Easter can sometimes be as much as five weeks apart in the Western and Eastern churches. Easter in 2012 will be Apr 8; in 2013 it will be Mar 31; in 2014 it will be Apr 20. Many other dates in the Christian year are derived from the date of Easter. See also: “Orthodox Easter Sunday or Pascha” (Apr 24).
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