Easter Dates

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 154, 27 March 1937, Page IX (Supplement)

Easter Dates

This year Easter faUs neither very earlv nor very late; just about the middle, in fact, of those days in which we can expect to find it. And how are those days fixed? They seem to vary a lot, and perhaps one day a change will be made and Easter Day will have its date fixed once and for all, like Christmas.

For the time being Easter remains a date that lias to be calculated afresh every year; and in ‘order to work it out, we must accept one particular date (March 21st) as being the time when day and night ar e equally long. Then we take the full moou on that date, or the next after that date, and look for the Sunday following that moon. That is Easter Sunday. If the full moon happens on a Sunday, Easter is the Sunday after. It sounds easy, but it isn’t, for moon movements do not correspond exactly to the calendar. To discover next year’s Easter, we must look out an almanac and set to work on what

are called the Golden Numbers. These are a series of numbers (1-19) representing a cycle of nineteen years; to each year has been given a second number, or Epact, which is the age, reckoned in days, of the moou at the beginning of the year. And we need Golden Number and Epact before we can discover that iu the year 2285 Easter will be at its earliest, which is March 22nd. and that it will fall at its latest —April 23th—in 1943.