Dating Easter

;
	Dating Easter

	Many people wonder why we often have different dates for Easter depending on which part of the Church we belong to. The answer comes from the way Easter is calculated. You may know that Easter Sunday falls on the first Sunday after the Full Moon on, or after, the March Equinox. The difficulty arises, however, because the date of the equinox actually varies from year to and from place to place. So Western Christians in the fourth Century, at the Council of Nicaea agreed to define Easter with respect to a fixed equinox date of March 21. Thus Easter can easily be determined without worrying about fluctuations in the sun and moon from year to year.
	However the Eastern Orthodox churches decided not to follow that definition, preferring to determine Easter from the real equinox and full moon at the longitude of Jerusalem. Hence, the occasional difference in the date of Easter between churches.
	This is complicated further by the fact that the Eastern Churches still use the Julian calendar to calculate ecclesiastical dates. The Julian calendar is currently 13 days later than the Gregorian calendar. Since 1923, the Romanian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox churches have adopted the Gregorian calendar. However, they continue to use the Julian calendar for Easter calculations.

If you're interested, here are the dates of Easter Sunday according to the Western calendar up to the year 2020
Year	Ash Wednesday	Easter Day	Year	Ash Wednesday	Easter Day
2001	Feb 28	April 15	2011	March 9	April 24
2002	Feb 13	March 31	2012	Feb 22	April 8
2003	March 5	April 20	2013	Feb 13	March 31
2004	Feb 25	April 11	2014	March 5	April 20
2005	Feb 9	March 27	2015	Feb 18	April 5
2006	March 1	April 16	2016	Feb 10	March 27
2007	Feb 21	April 08	2017	March 1	April 16
2008	Feb 6	March 23	2018	Feb 14	April 1
2009	Feb 25	April 12	2019	March 6	April 21
2010	Feb 17	April 04	2020	Feb 26	April 12