How is the Easter date determined?

The date for Easter is a “movable holiday.” It doesn’t occur on the same date every year like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a bit more like Thanksgiving, which isn’t on the same date every year, either. However, Thanksgiving is always the fourth Thursday of November, so it’s pretty easy to figure out just be looking at a calendar.

Easter is on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, which is the first full moon appearing after the vernal equinox (which happens on March 21). Yeah, it’s confusing, I know. To make things easier, we just assume the Spring Equinox will occur on March 21st. So go to March 21st on your calendar, then look up the next full moon. The following Sunday is Easter. It always occurs between March 22nd and April 25th.

The date can move around quite a bit since it is based on the phases of the moon which isn’t perfectly synced to the 12 months of the year used in the West. However, it always occurs between March 22 and April 25.

While they’re not perfectly synced, the date for the Christian Easter is usually very close to the date of the Jewish Passover, which is also based on the Paschal Full Moon. Typically, Easter Sunday occurs right after the Jewish Passover. However, because the Jewish calendar is different than the Western one and because every few years the Jewish calendar needs a kind of “leap month” to re-align it with the solar seasons, on some rare occasions, Passover is celebrated a full month after Easter Sunday.

What is the origin of the word “Easter”?

No one really knows where the word “Easter” came from. The celebration is based on the Jewish Passover (Jesus’ Last Supper was a Jewish Passover meal) and so was and still is often called Pascha (or some variation depending on the language). It has also been called Resurrection Day, the Great Sunday, and several other names. There are a few popular theories for the origin of our word “Easter”. The Venerable Bede – a church historian in the late 600’s – claimed it was named after the month in which it was celebrated: April (the old Anglo-Saxon word was Eosturmonath). The month itself was named after the goddess of the dawn, Oestre, who had a Spring feast (many cultures have spring feasts to celebrate the end of Winter and beginning of Spring). Other theories rely on the etymology of the word. It’s possible the German Ostern (“east”) may have had the same origins as our word “Easter.” Both may even be related to the Latin word for “dawn” (in albis), which became eostarum in Old High German. There is even a possibility that Easter is related to the old Teutonic word for “resurrection.” Theories abound, but no one is certain where the name “Easter” originated.