A Christian feast commemorating the Resurrection of Jesus.
The day on which this feast is observed, the first Sunday following the full moon that occurs on or next after the vernal equinox.
Eastertide.
16th century Russian Orthodox icon of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Easter is the most important holiday of the Christian year, observed in March, April, or May each year to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead after his death by crucifixion (see Good Friday), which Christians believe happened at about this time of year around AD 30-33. (Easter can also refer to the season of the church year, lasting for fifty days, which follows this holiday and ends around Pentecost. See Eastertide.)
In most languages of Christian societies, other than English and German, the holiday's name is derived from Pesach, the Hebrew name of Passover, a Jewish holiday to which the Christian Easter is intimately linked. Easter depends on Passover not only for much of its symbolic meaning but also for its position in the calendar; the Last Supper shared by Jesus and his disciples before his crucifixion is generally thought of as a Passover seder, based on the chronology in the Synoptic Gospels. The Gospel of John has a different chronology which has Christ's death at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lambs (perhaps for theological reasons). This would put the Last Supper slightly before Passover.
The English and German names, "Easter" and "Ostern", are not etymologically related to Pesach and likely derive either from Eostremonat, an old Germanic month name, or Eostre, an alleged Germanic goddess, whom the 8th century English historian Bede stated was honored with a festival during Eostremonat. No account of Eostre has been discovered other than Bede's single mention, which has led historians to suggest that Bede's observation was conjecture. It has been suggested that many of modern Easter's symbols, such as colored eggs and the Easter Bunny, are cultural remnants of Eostre's springtime festival and that Eostre merged with the Christian Pesach celebrations after the Germanic heathens were Christianized (see Easter as a Germanic Heathen festival below.), even though giving of eggs at spring festivals was not restricted to Germanic peoples and could be found among the Persians, Romans, Jews and the Armenians.
Date of Easter
In Western Christianity, Easter Day always falls on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25 inclusive. The following day, Easter Monday, is recognized as a legal holiday in most countries with a generally Christian tradition, but not as a rule in the United States, except formerly in a few states, all of which had dropped it by the 1980s.
Easter and the holidays that are related to it are moveable feasts, in that they do not fall on a fixed date in the Gregorian or Julian calendars (which follow the motion of the sun and the seasons). Instead, they are based on a lunar calendar similar -- but not identical -- to the Hebrew Calendar. The precise date of Easter has often been a matter for contention.
At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 it was decided that Easter would be celebrated on the same Sunday throughout the Church, but it is probable that no method was specified by the Council (unfortunately no verbatim account of the Council's decisions has survived). Instead, the matter seems to have been referred to the church of Alexandria, which city had the best name for scholarship at the time. The practice of this city was to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the earliest fourteenth day of a lunar month that occurred on or after March 21. During the Middle Ages this practice was more succinctly phrased as Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. The Church of Rome used its own methods to determine Easter until the 6th century, when it may have adopted the Alexandrian method as converted into the Julian calendar by Dionysius Exiguus (certain proof of this does not exist until the ninth century). Most churches in the British Isles used a late third century Roman method to determine Easter until they adopted the Alexandrian method at the Synod of Whitby in 664. Churches in western continental Europe used a late Roman method until the late 8th century during the reign of Charlemagne, when they finally adopted the Alexandrian method. Since western churches now use the Gregorian calendar to calculate the date and Eastern Orthodox churches use the original Julian calendar, their dates are not usually aligned in the present day.
At a summit in Aleppo, Syria, in 1997, the World Council of Churches proposed a reform in the calculation of Easter which would have replaced an equation-based method of calculating Easter with direct astronomical observation; this would have side-stepped the calendar issue and eliminated the difference in date between the Eastern and Western churches. The reform was proposed for implementation starting in 2001, but it was not ultimately adopted by any member body. See Reform of the date of Easter.
A few clergymen of various denominations have advanced the notion of disregarding the moon altogether in determining the date of Easter; proposals include always observing the feast on the second Sunday in April, or always having seven Sundays between the Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, producing the same result except that in leap years Easter could fall on April 7. These suggestions have yet to attra
