One Easter Sunday Celebrated this Year

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Author: Miki

CNN reported crowded streets in the Holy Land today, since Western and Orthodox Christians celebrated Easter on the same Sunday -- this won't happen again until 2010. Both churches mark the holy day on their calendars for the first full moon after the vernal equinox. So why does the Orthodox church sometimes celebrate Easter as many as five weeks after Christians in the West?

Firstly, the eastern Orthodox church still uses the Julian calendar and those in the West use the standard Gregorian calendar. The main difference between the two calendars is the leap year rule. Pope Gregory XIII had revised the Julian calendar in 1582, and came up with new Easter tables for calculating the Sunday celebration. The Western church follows these ecclesiastical rules to pick Easter Sunday, which fixes the vernal equinox on March 21st, and tabulates the "ecclesiastical full Moon," which is not always the astronomical full Moon. The eastern Orthodox churches observe the actual astronomical vernal equinox and the first full Moon that follows to set their date.