Easter

• 1. Introduction

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  Easter goes by a striking number of names. Depending on where you are in the Christian world, it is called Pasch, Pascha, Resurrection Sunday, or simply the Great and Holy Day. All of these names point to the same event: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, which the New Testament describes as occurring on the third day after his burial at Calvary, around 30 AD. That single event is the cornerstone of Christian theology, and the festival built around it has grown into one of the most widely observed occasions on the planet. But Easter is also a puzzle. Unlike Christmas, it falls on a different date each year. It arrives trailing forty days of fasting, a calendar controversy that lasted centuries, and a set of symbols whose origins stretch back well before Christianity itself. How a spring Sunday became a moveable feast tied simultaneously to the Jewish Passover, an ancient lunar calendar, and a possible Anglo-Saxon goddess is the story this documentary sets out to tell.

• 2. Name and Origins

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  In Latin and Greek, the Christian celebration has always been called Pascha, a word derived from the Aramaic and cognate to the Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover. As early as 50 AD, Paul the Apostle, writing from Ephesus to Christians in Corinth, was already applying the Passover term directly to Christ. In most European languages, the words for Christian Easter and Jewish Passover are identical, and older English translations of the Bible used the term Easter to translate Passover as well.

  The English and German words tell a different story. In the 8th century AD, the Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar Bede recorded in his work The Reckoning of Time that the Old English month called Ēosturmōnaþ, corresponding to April, had once been named after a goddess called Ēostre, "in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month." The modern English word Easter and the German Ostern both developed from related Old English forms of that same word. Whether Ēostre was a widely worshipped deity or a localized tradition Bede alone preserved remains an open question, but her name appears to have outlasted her cult by more than a thousand years.

  The theological connection to Passover is more than etymological. According to the three Synoptic Gospels, both the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus occurred during the week of Passover. At the Last Supper, Jesus reframed the Passover meal in terms of his own body and blood, and Paul drew on the Jewish requirement to remove all leavened bread before Passover when he wrote to the Corinthians: "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed."

• 3. A Calendar Controversy

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  By the later 2nd century, Christians widely agreed that Easter was a practice handed down from the disciples. The dispute was not whether to celebrate it, but when. The first major conflict, known as the Quartodeciman controversy, pitted the churches of Roman Asia against Rome and Alexandria. The Quartodecimans ended their Lenten fast on Nisan 14, the 14th day of the Hebrew month tied to Passover, regardless of what day of the week that fell on. The Roman and Alexandrian churches insisted that Easter must always fall on a Sunday.

  Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, described by the church historian Eusebius as a disciple of John the Apostle, debated the matter with Anicetus, bishop of Rome. Neither convinced the other, but both parted in peace. The mood turned sharper a generation later when Victor, bishop of Rome, attempted to excommunicate Polycrates of Ephesus and all the bishops of Asia for their Quartodecimanism. Eusebius records that multiple synods were convened. The excommunication was eventually rescinded after Irenaeus and others reminded Victor of the tolerant precedent set by Anicetus. Quartodecimanism persisted into the 4th century, when Socrates of Constantinople reported that John Chrysostom deprived some Quartodecimans of their churches and that Nestorius harassed others.

  A separate complaint then emerged: some Christians were dissatisfied with relying on Jewish communities to set the date of Passover, and thus Easter, because those communities sometimes placed Nisan 14 before the spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. The Sardica paschal table documents these complaints, recording that Jews in an eastern Mediterranean city, possibly Antioch, fixed Nisan 14 well before the equinox on multiple occasions. This dissatisfaction pushed Christians toward independent calculation.

  The settlement came at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Emperor Constantine convened the Council partly to resolve the Easter controversy, and letters from those present record a decision requiring all Christians to determine Easter independently, following the lead of Rome and Alexandria, the latter praised for its ancient expertise in astronomical computation. In the years that followed, the Alexandrian computational system gradually became the standard across the Christian world, though the process took centuries. Churches in western continental Europe did not fully adopt the Alexandrian method until the reign of Charlemagne in the late 8th century.

• 4. How the Date Is Computed

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  In 725, Bede gave what he considered a plain summary: "The Sunday following the full Moon which falls on or after the equinox will give the lawful Easter." The actual rules are more complicated. The full moon referred to in the computation is not an astronomical full moon but the 14th day of a standardized lunar month, called the Paschal full moon. The equinox used in the calculation is fixed by convention on the 21st of March, even though the astronomical equinox can fall on the 19th, 20th, or 21st.

  The Gregorian calculation of Easter was based on a method devised by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius for adjusting the monthly lunar reckoning, and it has been adopted by almost all Western Christians. In the British Empire and its colonies, the date of Easter Sunday was defined using Golden Numbers and Sunday Letters by the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750.

  Eastern Orthodox Christians follow the same underlying rule but apply it to the Julian calendar, where the 21st of March currently corresponds to the 3rd of April in the Gregorian calendar. Because the Julian calendar's lunar tables also run five days behind astronomical reality, the Orthodox Paschal full moon can fall on what is astronomically a waning gibbous moon. The result is that Orthodox Easter varies between the 4th of April and the 8th of May in Gregorian terms, and it coincides with Catholic Easter in 31 years of the 21st century. After 2698, the two Easters will diverge permanently.

  Reform proposals have circulated for over a century without taking effect. The Easter Act of 1928 in the United Kingdom legislated that Easter should fall on the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April, but the act has never been implemented. In 1997, the World Council of Churches proposed aligning Easter across denominations using precise astronomical calculations based on the meridian of Jerusalem, targeting implementation from 2001 onward. No member body adopted the reform. In November 2022, the Patriarch of Constantinople announced that conversations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches had begun, with hopes of reaching agreement in time for the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in 2025.

• 5. Holy Week and the Liturgical Season

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  Western Christianity structures the days before Easter into a sequence of named observances. Lent, a period of fasting and penance that does not count Sundays, lasts 40 days and begins on Ash Wednesday. The final week is Holy Week, opening on Palm Sunday to mark Jesus's entry into Jerusalem. Wednesday of that week is called Spy Wednesday, mourning the betrayal of Jesus. The last three days are Maundy Thursday, commemorating the Last Supper; Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion; and Holy Saturday, sometimes called Silent Saturday.

  Eastern Christianity follows a parallel but distinct rhythm. Great Lent begins on Clean Monday and runs for 40 continuous days including Sundays, ending on Lazarus Saturday. The fast continues through the following week. The Paschal Vigil begins with the Midnight Office, timed to end just before midnight on Holy Saturday. At the stroke of midnight, the priest lights a candle representing the resurrection, altar servers light additional candles, and a procession circles the church three times to represent the three days in the tomb.

  Both traditions observe an extended season after Easter. In Western Christianity, Eastertide runs from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday, the 50th day. In Eastern Christianity, the same period is called the Pentecostarion. Orthodox practice marks the week after Easter as Bright Week, a period with no fasting even on the days normally reserved for it. The Paschal greeting, "Christ is risen!" answered by "He is risen indeed!" is exchanged throughout this season, but ceases after the Apodosis, the leave-taking of the feast, which in Eastern practice falls on the 39th day.

• 6. Eggs, Bunnies, and Easter Foods

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  The egg as a symbol of new life predates Christianity, but the early Christian community of Mesopotamia gave it a specifically Easter meaning by staining eggs red in memory of the blood of Christ shed at the crucifixion. For Christians, the Easter egg came to represent the empty tomb. The batik-like decoration technique known as pisanka produces intricately colored eggs in Slavic traditions. The House of Fabergé created jewelled Easter eggs for the Russian Imperial family from 1885 to 1916.

  Cadbury manufactured its first Easter egg in 1875, and the British chocolate company now sponsors an annual egg hunt held at over 250 National Trust locations in the United Kingdom. On Easter Monday, the President of the United States hosts an annual Easter egg roll on the White House lawn.

  The Easter Bunny originated in Germany as a legendary gift-giving figure analogous to Santa Claus, and children in the tradition leave out baskets to be filled while they sleep. Historically, foxes, cranes, and storks were also named as the mystical creatures bringing Easter gifts. In Australia, where the rabbit is a pest, the Easter Bilby has been promoted as an alternative.

  Food traditions vary sharply by region. Hot cross buns have been eaten on Good Friday in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and elsewhere, with the cross on top representing the crucifixion and the spices inside signifying the embalming of Jesus. A monk at St Albans Abbey named Brother Thomas Rodcliffe is credited with developing a similar recipe in 1361, distributing an "Alban Bun" to the poor on Good Friday. In Greece, the traditional Easter meal is mageiritsa, a stew of chopped lamb liver and wild greens. In Sweden and Denmark, families feast on a smörgåsbord of herring, salmon, and eggs on Holy Saturday. The Italian Colomba di Pasqua, an Easter bread shaped like a dove, is described as the Easter counterpart to panettone and pandoro. The Slavic dish paskha, made from tvorog and traditionally shaped as a truncated pyramid, is brought to church on Holy Saturday to be blessed; the pyramid shape is interpreted by some as a symbol of the first Passover in Egypt, by others as a symbol of the Trinity or the Tomb of Christ.

• 7. Those Who Do Not Observe

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  Not all Christians celebrate Easter. Many Puritans regarded it, alongside All Saints' Day, as an abomination because the Bible does not explicitly authorize it. Conservative Reformed denominations including the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America reject Easter as a violation of what they call the regulative principle of worship.

  Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Easter but observe a yearly commemorative service on the evening of Nisan 14, marking the Last Supper and the execution of Christ. This service, commonly called "The Memorial," is based on verses they interpret as a commandment to remember Christ's death rather than his resurrection.

  Members of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, hold that elevating any single day above others implies that un-Christian behavior is acceptable on the remaining days. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Quakers were persecuted specifically for this refusal to observe Holy Days. The group Restored Church of God claims Easter originated as a pagan spring festival that was later adopted by the Roman Catholic Church.

  The Greek island of Syros offers one of the few places where the divergence between Catholic and Orthodox dates has been resolved locally: the Catholic population of the island accepts the Orthodox date, a practice the source describes as helping maintain good relations between the island's two near-equal communities.