Happy Easter everyone. And Happy Passover everyone else. My husband is Jewish and I am Catholic, and over the years we’ve celebrated both. Since early in our marriage, I’ve been struck with the question about how these dates are chosen, and why they seemingly must coincide. And why the powers that be couldn’t just get out their Filofaxes and Blackberrys (this was the 90’s after all) in the great conference room in the sky and give a small family a break?
Furthermore, in all that time, I’ve never gotten around to getting to the bottom of it. Without the benefit of Google, I would have had to go to the library and research it. But time passed, and the world came to our fingertips, and I’m again wondering… how are these two holidays linked?
Here goes… who figures out when Easter is? And how is it linked to Passover on the lunisolar calendar?
Easter
Easter can officially land anytime between March 21 and April 25th, on the first Sunday after the first full moon of the northern Spring equinox.
Funny, when I think about it, bec we have had the most beautiful moonlight in our bedroom these last several nights. So bright and blue, it has put me into thinking about Shakespearean characters, longings and quotes. So I know we are, right now, on the first Sunday after a beautiful full moon.
And we are happy, eating chocolates, decorating with bunnies and eggs. Easter is clearly a formerly Pagan spring ritual – celebrating life, fertility and rebirth – co-opted to coincide with the church’s desire to commemorate the death – and rebirth – of Jesus Christ. The Pagan goddess of spring Eostre (or Ostara) gave the holiday its name. It retains its outdoor celebratory air, with sidewalk chalk and bubbles and things wholly unrelated to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
Passover
Meanwhile, Good Friday, the day of Jesus’s death, in the year 33 AD,was also the 15th of Nisan, in the Hebrew Calendar – the first night of Passover. The Hebrew Calendar was still in wide use, and it was lunisolar – governed not just by days or trips around the sun, but also contingent on moon rotations. The 15th of Nisan is the first night of the full moon, after the Spring equinox, or sometime in March or April on the Gregorian – our current – calendar.
Passover very closely adheres to what religious event it commemorates – the plagues, the Jews flight into the desert, Moses parting the seas and Jews coming into the promised land and regaining their freedom from slavery. The name Passover refers to the final and worst plague, in which the first born sons were to be slain, and the blood of a sacrificial lamb on their doors would spare the Jewish sons. They were literally, passed over for this horrible fate.
For the record, the 10 plagues of Egypt were: Blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, pestilence of livestock, boils, hail and fire, locusts, darkness for three days, and death of the first-borns. You don’t see baskets of chocolate boils or jelly frogs or lice toys in pink and purple. Passover sticks to the script.
The Lunisolar Calendar
Passover’s traditional sacrificial lamb enters into the iconography of Easter, as Jesus was called the Lamb of God, sacrificed to take all our sins upon himself, on the first night of Passover, or Good Friday in the Christian faith.
Easter is central to the Christian faith – Jesus rose to heaven, and the central faith and promise is that Christians will rise to heaven upon death. It was important to commemorate it properly – and so early Christians chose to tie it directly to Passover, instead of having a set date. At the time, it was the surest way to know they were commemorating the holiest and most important festival of the Christian Church at the right time.
Until the year 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII switched the Western World to the Gregorian calendar, we all lived on the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar (started in 45 BC by Julius Caesar) did not calculate the leap year quite accurately. It was off by 18 minutes per year. So a thousand or more years later, seasons were shifting and the lunisolar Hebrew calendar was considered the more reliable way to track the celebration of Easter.
So I guess that explains it all, why, millenia later, mixed-religion families cannot be at both Passover and Easter celebrations with their families, and why they are so often celebrated at the same time. They are inextricably linked. Lambs, and lice, full moons and Spring’s promise of new beginnings.
Happy Spring and new hope to you all.