The Season of Easter - Easter
The celebration of our risen Lord!
Meanings
The Easter season of the church year is the celebration of the risen Lord. Christ said "destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days" (John 2:19). John explains in verse 21 "but the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said".
So what does that mean for us today?
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection".
Romans 6:4-5
Therefore we rejoice in the new life that we have here and now and the promise of the resurrection and life eternal with our Lord. This is such good news that all of history hinges on the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the same way, the liturgical calendar of the church year hinges on the Easter celebration.
History
In Edward T. Horn's The Christian Year, he states "Easter Day is the oldest and, in a sense, the source of all the festivals of the Christian year. The earliest reference to any church season is to the period of fifty days begun with Easter and ended with Pentecost. Older than Advent and Lent, it was called Quinquagesima - the Holy Fifty Days, or the Great Fifty Days. The ancient name for Easter was Pascha which is derived from the Hebrew word meaning "passover". The title, Easter, is derived from the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess, Eostre, whose festival occurred each year at the vernal equinox.
Easter Day is the "Queen of the Feasts" of the church year. Because our Lord rose from the dead on the first day of the week, every Sunday is an "Easter" and a commemoration of the resurrection. The meeting of Christians for worship on Sunday began in the early church because of the resurrection.
A Movable Holiday
Easter is a movable holiday, meaning that the date is calculated according to a formula and is not a set date. The entire church year with the exception of the six weeks from the First Sunday in Advent to the Epiphany, and the fixed date festivals, depends upon the date of Easter, which may occur between March 22 and April 25. It is usually said that Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.
But this definition hides a number of problems and can require quite accurate knowledge of the orbit of the moon. The first problem is the need to define a longitude on earth for which Sunday is determined. For example, at the instant of Full Moon it may be Sunday in Sydney but still Saturday in London giving rise in certain circumstances to a different date for Easter. A second problem arises from the variabilities in the orbit of the moon which is perturbed by the sun and the major planets. The exact orbit of the moon was not known precisely until recent times and it would be difficult if the date of Easter changed as our knowledge of the moon's orbit changed.
To obtain consistency in the date of Easter, the Church at the Council of Nicea decided to define Easter with respect to an imaginary moon - known as the "ecclesiastic moon". Also, the date of equinox was fixed at March 21 even though it can vary slightly from this date. With this definition, the date of Easter can be determined in advance without further astronomical knowledge. But the sequence of dates varies significantly from year-to-year with Easter Sunday being as early as March 22 and as late as April 25. In fact, the exact sequence of Easter dates repeats itself approximately every 5,700,000 years in our Gregorian calendar.
The Eastern Orthodox churches decided not to follow the above definition and they determine Easter from the real full moon at the longitude of Jerusalem. Hence, there is sometimes a difference in the date of Easter between churches.
Here are some examples of dates for Easter:
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