From The Editor

EDITORIAL

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THIS month presented particular practical planning problems for our editorial team, with Holy Week falling in the latter days of March and Easter Day on Sunday April 1.

The question we grappled with was whether we should concentrate our Easter focus in March or April? Our decision was to make April the focus of the season of Easter – and advance apologies if anyone disagrees with this!

Unlike Christmas, Easter Day is not a fixed one, but rather determined by full moon timings. This stems from a decision by the Council of Nicaea in 325CE that Easter would be marked on the first Sunday after the full moon which took place after the spring equinox, centring roughly around March 21.

This does mean Easter Sunday can be established many years in advance, but it can also mean dramatic variations from year to year. My daughter, for example, was born on Easter Monday in the last week of March – and Easter Monday does not fall on that same date again until the mid 21st century.

There remains division over whether Easter should be a fixed day in the calendar and there have been repeated attempts to standardise Easter Day since the 1920s.

However, I personally quite like that Easter is not a set day in the calendar – in the same way that Christmas is fixed. It adds something to the mystery of the Resurrection that the day is not so predictable every year. Whilst Christmas is generally guaranteed to take place amid a bleak, freezing winter, Easter can vary from the gales of March to the early spring sunshine of April (or slightly later in the Orthodox calendar), resonating with the hidden and unpredictable messages of the Resurrection.

Unlike Christmas, Easter Day is not a fixed one, but rather determined by full moon timings.

Fixing the date of Easter in our calendar may make it easy for administrative planners, but it would also remove its edgy connection with nature with the date of this key Christian season determined by the link with God’s creation.

It also sets the season firmly apart and makes it ‘diff erent’ in the minds of both Christians and non-Christians.

Whilst Christmas has become a recognisable mid-winter holiday for all regardless of belief, and has grown to become a consumer festival, Easter remains deeply mysterious – a date that cannot be easily pinned down or rooted or attached to any other belief or festival and is not so easily hijacked by those seeking commercial gain.

Easter remains the force that not only underpins but also provides the simple basis of the Christian faith: the suff ering and death of Christ on the cross and his resurrection – overcoming the ultimate incontrovertible truth of death with the miracle that provides the springboard for our faith.

Lynne McNeil Editor

This article appears in the March 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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