Madam, - Your readers will be aware that Easter Sunday this year falls on the very early date of March 23rd and this has many implications which impinge on all our lives.
Our calendar still shows signs of having been marked since ancient times by a combination of days, planets and gods. The week still begins with Sun's day, followed by Moon's day and ends with Saturn's day. In ancient times, if your way of life centred on fishing, hunting, or caring for flocks at night, moonlight and tides would control your life and your calendar would follow the moon. But if you grew crops the seasons would be more important and a solar calendar would make more sense.
The Jewish calendar is lunar and the civil calendar, set by Julius Caesar of Rome in 46BC, is solar. The Church's calendar is a combination of both. The celebration of Easter, Jesus Christ's resurrection, was set at the first Ecumenical Council of Nicea as the first Sunday after the Jewish Passover. But the celebration of Christmas, his birthday, is fixed into the yearly or solar calendar, irrespective of what day of the week it falls on.
We all know that our birthdays move on each year by one day in the week, or two days in a leap year, for the simple reason that 365 = 52x7+1 and 366 = 52x7+2. Caesar's trick of setting a year at 365¼ days, for the time of the earth going around the sun, and allowing for a leap year every fourth year was almost right, but not quite, and proved to be imprecise because that fraction is not actually a quarter, or 0.25, but 0.2422. After 1,500 years the first day of spring had slipped back by 10 days from March 21st. If you are handy with your calculator you can figure it out yourself.
So Pope Gregory XIII dropped 10 days from the year 1582 (October 4th was followed next day by October 15th) and decreed that there would be fewer leap years in future, by making century years ordinary years - unless, like 2000, the number was divisible by 400.
Of course England and its dominions did not accept the papal decree and the calendar correction was made only in 1752 when 11 days had to be dropped out of September that year. There were riots all over the place: "Give us back the 11 days taken out of our lives," was the cry.
In the Church's calendar nothing displaces the liturgical celebration of the days before and after Easter, namely the days of Holy Week and Easter Week. So liturgical celebrations normally attached to such dates as March 17th, March 19th and March 25th have to be moved this year, since Easter Sunday falls on March 23rd. This applies to the liturgical celebrations: St Patrick moves to the Saturday before Palm Sunday, St Joseph to the Friday before and even the Annunciation of the Incarnation to the Monday after Easter Week. The last time this happened was in 1913 and very few are around now who remember. The next time will be 2160. But a lot of us are still around who remember 1940, when Easter Sunday fell on March 24th and accordingly March 17th fell on Palm Sunday and we had "the palm and shamrock together".
The previous coincidence of palm and shamrock was in 1799 and the next will be in 2391. The earliest possible date for Easter Sunday is March 22nd. That last happened in 1818 and the next will be in 2285. The latest possible date for Easter Sunday is April 25th. That last happened in 1943, not too long ago, and the next will be 2038, not far off.
The Easter Sunday rule was made at the first Ecumenical Council of the Church at Nicea (in modern Turkey) in 325. The last Ecumenical Council of the Church, Vatican II, stated that it is not opposed to assigning the feast of Easter to a fixed Sunday, provided those whom it may concern give their assent, and it does not oppose efforts designed to introduce a perpetual calendar into civil society. But it states that the succession of the seven-day week, with Sunday, must be left intact. - Yours, etc,
Fr TOM KELLEHER, Courceys, Kinsale, Co Cork.