Easter Sunday

When it falls

The first Sunday after the first full moon on or after 21 March, so between 22 March and 25 April. The forty days of Lent precede it, and the week before is Holy Week.

The Phala almanac gives the exact day for your own city; the lunar and solar rules above are what it computes from.

How Vedic Phala finds the date

Western Easter is not simply “the first full moon after 21 March” read from the sky that year. Churches use a computus: an ecclesiastical approximation of the March equinox and full moon, followed by the next Sunday. Vedic Phala applies the Gregorian computus for years from 1583 onward. That produces the Western date used by Catholic and most Protestant churches and anchors Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Ascension-related observances and Pentecost around it.

Orthodox Pascha is calculated separately from the Julian computus and then converted to the civil calendar. It can coincide with Western Easter or fall weeks later. The app therefore has distinct Easter and Pascha entries rather than treating one as a regional nickname. Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox and local churches can have additional calendar choices, so a church’s own notice is the final authority for its service.

Sunrise services, the Paschal vigil and the first meal after a fast occur at local times, but they do not change the computus date. Civil school holidays and commercial “Easter weekend” schedules are consequences of the feast, not inputs to its calculation.

Because the result is always a Sunday, Western Easter ranges from 22 March to 25 April. Good Friday is two days earlier and Pentecost forty-nine days later in the app’s date arithmetic. Those relationships are calculated from Easter each year rather than maintained as independent holiday tables.

The story

The Resurrection: Jesus, crucified on the Friday, was found on the third day to have risen from the tomb. It is the centre of the Christian year, the feast all the others are counted from, and the reason Sunday is the Christian day of rest. Its date follows the Jewish Passover, at which the crucifixion took place, and was fixed by the Council of Nicaea in 325.

The name in English comes from a spring goddess or the month named for her; every other language calls it Pascha, from Pesach. The egg, the hare and the lamb came in from the spring around it, the egg above all as the tomb from which life comes.

How the day is kept

• Holy Week: Palm Sunday with palm fronds, Maundy Thursday with the washing of feet, Good Friday in silence, and the Easter Vigil on Saturday night, when the new fire is lit, the Paschal candle carried into the dark church, and the bells ring again at midnight.
• Seville and the towns of Andalusia carry their images through the streets all week (Semana Santa); the Philippines re-enacts the Passion; the Pope gives the Urbi et Orbi blessing from St Peter's at noon on the day.
• Eggs dyed, hidden and hunted; the Easter bunny for children; new clothes and the Easter bonnet in the older English custom.
• The greeting Christ is risen, answered He is risen indeed, and the first meal after Lent with lamb and the eggs.

At the table

Roast lamb, hot cross buns on the Friday, simnel cake in Britain, the Italian colomba, Greek tsoureki with a red egg baked in, and chocolate eggs.

More holy days