THE MOVING EASTER

Taranaki Daily News, 12 July 1935, Page 11

THE MOVING EASTER

EFFORTS FOR REFORM DUE TO FICTITIOUS MOON. ADVANTAGES OF FIXTURE. On the eve of their dispersal for a brief holiday, members of Parliament again found in their post-bags copies of ' resolutions passed by Chambers of Commerce emphasising th .- advantage to trade which a fixed Easter would give, writes Norman Hart in the Daily Telegraph. They should know those advantages by, now. Ever since 'the century began Chambers of Commerce, both in this country and abroad, year by year, have ■ made their demand for a fixed Easter. The International Chamber of Commerce has echoed and amplified the cry. Beyond a doubt, the whole business world desires a stable Easter, just as it desires a stable exchange. Yet it has neither. . It is, of course, the retail trade that is hit the more severely and directly. That Easter may fall anywhere within the five weeks from March 23 to April 22, together with the corresponding shiftiness of Whitsuntide, is a disturbing factor that shopkeepers everywhere would do almost anything to get rid of. • The'public do not buy steadily all the year round. They have long made a habit of thinking and acting seasonally. It thus makes an enormous difference to j the retail trade whether Easter buying is accompanied by the chill winds of March or is fostered by April’s smiling promise of spring. Similar considerations, mutatis mutandis, apply to the earliness or lateness of Whitsun. A real proportion of unemployment may logically be laid at the door of a movable Easter. “GENUINE ADVANTAGES.” • But it is not only business folk who want a fixed Easter. As the League of Nations pointed out when it took the matter up some years ago, “the stabilisation of this festival at a suitable time would offer genuin: advantages to the population as a whole.” In particular, I Judges and school and university authorities would welcome an Easter which would be less disturbing to the regularity of their activities. . - j To find the historical basis for our inheritance of a saltatory Easter we must go back to the Council of Nicaea. ’ In order to perpetuate the link in time between the Resurrection and the Passover, that Council decreed that Easter should fall on the Sunday following the Passover full moon.. Endless trouble followed from-this decision. For the moon is not I at its full for more than a few moments at any one place, and if its fulness occurs near midnight, two adjacent places may differ as to the day on which the full moon falls. Much more so, to Us'c I Euclid’s neat phrase, for spots geographically far apart. Thus, it was that as time went on, and I Christianity spread farther over the earth’s surface, the local divergencies in the date of Easter became wider. The confusion continued until Pope Gregory XHI, the reformer of our calendar, tackled the problem. He dealt with it as I heroically as he had with the Augustan method of dividing up the year. He had put the calendar right by jettisoning eleven days; and now he gave all longitudes the same Easter by creating a fictitious full moon that shone on all sides of the world at once. INGENIOUS INVENTION. , The ingenious invention of this accom- i modating orb resulted in the curious | complications to be found in our Prayer . Book under "Table To Find Easter Day.” But the mysteries of Paschal Moons and Epacts, Bissextile Years apd Golden ‘Numbers, Dominical Letters, and other! ecclesiastical products of medieval I mathematics would not matter if they did not leave so wide a slice of the calendar open to Easter. One thing is clear, however. No i dogma is in any way involved. That point was settled at the League of Na- i tions conference in 1923, called to dis- ! cuss the problem of Easter, at which the Churches were represented. AH but the Roman Catholic Church expressed willingness to forgo the fascination of an an- I nual plunge into the picturesque ab- I strusities of the schoolmen’s calculations. Rome’s attitude then and since has been a little obscure. While agreeing that there is no implication of the Church’s dogma, the Holy See makes a strong / point of the weight and value of tradi- I tion. At the same time the hint is thrown out that the matter might be examined “if it were proved that the I general welfare called for changes.” I . Somewhat surprisingly, seeing that this I was a matter of international reform, Great Britain took the lead in 1928. Alone 1 among the nations, she passed an Act of I Parliament fixing the date of Easter for the first Sunday after the second Satur- - day in April. This provision restricts j Easter to a date between April 9 and . April 15. Whit Sunday should then fall on the first. Sunday following May 27. The coming into force of this Act was made dependent on an Order in Council, I the idea being to await common international action. The position to-day is - that practically all Governments are in I favour of a fixed Easter and all the I Christian churches except the Roman I Catholic Church have declared for it. CHURCH OBJECTS. It has been suggested that Great Bri-I tain should go "unilateral” and bring the 1928 Act into force; but the Church of England opposes that course. As the I Archbishop of Canterbury said in the House of Lords: “The existing differences in Christendom are bad enough, and we ought not needlessly to add to them.” In short, the Church of England will not consent to the change unless Rome does. While we all thus wait on the. Vatican,! someone has come along to ask whether I the Easter Act has not made a meteorological mistake in fixing on April 9 to 15 as the week in which Easter should I ' fall. It is pointed out that the second of Alexander Buchan’s famous annual I “cold periods” is due from April 11 to 14. Official statistics largely bear out Buchan’s prophesies as regards this par- j ticular period. They show that .-in ninety years the four days yielded 50 per cent, more frost! than the preceding four days. On the average, moreover, considerably more I rain falls during the chosen week than | during either the week before or the I . week after. The week after is on the I average the driest week in the year, and I it is suggested that advantage should be taken of this fact, and the Act amended so as to make Easter follow, not the second, but the third Saturday in April. • This year, as it happens, Easter does fall in this statistically propitious week. Holiday-makers will thus be able to judge for themselves whether the proposed amendment would improve the Act. .