I'm sure they'd be fine if the Jews wanted to set Passover on the day before.
I should remember the details, but wasn't there a disagreement sometime in the Middle Ages between the church in Rome and the church in Ireland about the calculation of the Easter date? The Celtic method might have tracked the Jewish calculation of Passover? But I don't know that.
There were (and are) lots of disagreements about the date of Easter. The article mentions the north of Britain being a hold out back in the day.
Anyway, it was news to me that there was such an active push toward a common date.
Oh, might have been the north of Britain. I'm remembering Celtic and could have turned that into Irish.
I think maybe because there were no Jewish people around them, they didn't care as much about keeping a different date to make it clear they were separate from the Jewish people.
2/3 Early Christians had probably originally celebrated Easter concurrent with the Jewish Passover (see Passover, Christian holiday), which was held on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month of the Jewish year, called Nisan, the day of the crucifixion according to John 19:14. However, the First Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed that Christians should no longer use the Jewish calendar but universally adopt the practice of celebrating it on a Sunday, the day of the resurrection, as had come to be the custom in Rome and Alexandria.[5] Calculating the proper date (computus) was a complex process (involving a lunisolar calendar), and different calculation tables developed which resulted in different dates for the celebration of Easter.
The month of Nisan used to be call Datsun.
I wondered about making that joke and decided it would be antisemitic, so I'd leave it to a Jewish commenter. Thank you.
A common date for Easter is a thing the churches in the Middle East have been talking about for a while now, but this seems to be pushing the idea forward quite a bit.
12: That joke is so terrible that the sin against the Jews is less significant than the sin against humor.
Well, Stanley doesn't seem to be around, so somebody has to step up.
I wonder that the religious leaders don't realize that this kind of practical rational approach goes against the spirit of religion.
If they actually do it, there will be no shortage of people ready to schism over it.
Ultimately, the Easter Bunny will determine if it will stick. When the chocolate eggs are hatched, people will celebrate Easter.
I don't think it would be that big of a deal, at least in the Western churches.
17: That's my stupidest comment yet. Hatched???? Oy!
6: Well...the Celtic Church was Irish in character, formed by monks heading north out of Ireland into western Scotland (think Iona) and establishing monasteries there. These gradually filtered east and south into Anglo-Saxon Northumbria (think Lindisfarne), coming into contact with Roman missionaries coming north from Kent. So calling it "Irish" isn't wrong, especially back then when the Gaelic languages hadn't really split apart. (They were surely mutually intelligible, and when the monks weren't writing in Latin they were writing in a prestige dialect of Old Irish.) However, that doesn't imply any unity of hierarchy; colony monasteries might defer for a time to their mother house, but otherwise they'd be relatively independent of each other.
Welp, that was uninteresting.
18: Some of the things that most pissed people off about Vatican II were the relatively trivial but familiar things like this.
Brass tacks: How will this affect my chocolate egg intake I mean my Lent and Holy Week chocolate egg intake I mean lectio divina?
Speaking of, have you heard about the Creme Egg Cafe
22: They changed the whole language.
So, by the heads of Christian churches, we have the Anglicans, the Catholics, the Copts, and the Greek Orthodox? That's not nothing, but it leaves out a ton of Protestant denominations, the other Orthodox denominations, plus a few other non-Chalcedonian sects. Is everyone assuming they're gong to fall in line, or will there just be a new and more confusing Easter schism?
Plus outlawed keying cars just because somebody was Lutheran.
I don't know if the other Orthodox churches will fall in line, but I don't see how them celebrating Easter on a different date would result in schism given that nobody calls celebrating Easter on a different date a schism now.
Synod of Whitby was a fucking scam, bitches! Down with bullshit Easter calculations and the Roman tonsure! No Roman asshole governs my hairstyle!!!!!
This story is a complete fucking scam. I was, as it happens, present when it was launched. The ABC who is an operator, and a clever man, waited until there was a lull in half an hours semi-comprehensible wrangling about just how homophobic his organisation is and then threw out this in the justified confidence that it would steal all the headlines from anything that might actually happen. He knows it won't. The Orthodox won't even use the Gregorian calendar for these things; still less will they agree to a fixed date for Easter. The Catholics might, though I have no idea why. And the idea comes from a Copt, who has other more pressing things on his mind too.
the sin against the Jews is less significant than the sin against humor.
26 - technically, the Ecumenical Patriarch, who is (theoretically) first-among-equals among the Greek, Russian, Serbian, random-Eastern-European Orthodox types. The Copts wouldn't have gone forward with this without at least checking with the Armenians & Syriac Orthodox. Ecumenically-minded Protestants are going to be "whatevs, you guys sort it out"; you can't get all the prots on board no matter what so fuck them. The Assyrians have been very very slowly cozying up to the Catholics over the past few decades, so I don't see them getting pissy over this. Still have to make the journey from viewing-with-favor to actually signing something, which is considerable.
Having fixed dates for Carnival would be nice.
28
Uh? I call it schism, in that it's a different Easter date. But whatever, doesn't matter. Call it Easter difference, or Easter divergence, or "hey, people celebrate Easter on different days." My point is, if Methodists and Episcopalians celebrate Easter on different days it's going to be a lot more confusing than the the current split, because there's way more overlap/intermingling between Mainline protestants and Catholics than there is with the Copts & the Orthodox, who already celebrate Christmas on a different day.
Epiphany moved around without anybody even noticing much. That's not the same kind of holiday, but still.
34: I live in a very Catholic city, culturally. If Methodists and Episcopalians celebrate Easter on a different day, it would affect my scheduling less than the Orthodox Christian holidays or the Jewish holidays. The Methodists all live in the suburbs. The Episcopalians don't go to church.
If the huge displays of crackers and jarred fish appeared in the stores and Easter didn't follow soon, it would be confusing.
The big question for me is to what degree the Eastern/Greek Orthodox have actually bought into this - from the article HH Pope Tawadros has "discussed the matter" with HAH the Ecumenical Patriarch (or HAHTEP for short) but that's pretty non-committal. The Russians probably won't be very keen on the idea.
Dear Sirs,
We act for the estate of Count Vlad Dracula. Our attention has been drawn to the fact that a commenter on your blog has identified himself as the Sinner of Whitby. Our client asserts his moral right to the title of Sinner of Whitby. Unless all copies of this blog are withdrawn from circulation and a full apology published, we will have no alternative but to pursue you for remedy in the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Waiting to hear from you at your earliest convenience
And the idea comes from a Copt, who has other more pressing things on his mind too.
I wondered about that. I thought maybe it was an attempt to keep the Copts in the mind of the Western churches as a potential means of protection in case things got very bad.
Dracula wasn't from Whitby, just passed through.
Hey wait, what would this do to the timing of Mardi Gras? I guess I can look that up.
Mardi Gras is apparently starts 47 days before Easter. I guess that's Fat Tuesday?
Follow the money. Ever since the candy industry succeeded in pushing daylight savings time a week to push more candy before dark on halloween, everyone's looking for an angle. Although in this case, a later Easter seems unlikely to be in the candy industry's interest.
This is a beer industry lobbying initiative intended to even out cash flow. Mardi Gras will fall about halfway between the other two major beer drinking Holy Days in the first quarter, Super Bowl Sunday and St. Patrick's Day.
The Ridiculous Costume and Float lobby may also be involved. Better spacing between Chinese New Year (this year Feb. 8) and Mardi Gras (this year Feb. 9).
So if Easter is either the second or third Sunday of April, that bounds it between April 8th and April 21. Which puts Mardi Gras starting at February 20th to March 5th.
So it won't overlap with our Spring Break, I guess. That's too bad.
I just thought of something. Wouldn't "Mardi Foie Gras" be a more descriptive and accurate name than "Foie Gras"?
This comment brought to you by an extremely vague knowledge of French and procrastination.
Mardi Gras is apparently starts 47 days before Easter. I guess that's Fat Tuesday?
Oui. Mardi (Tuesday) gras (fat).
Pwned, because I shouldn't try to French.
48
Oh, so now you're working for Big Foie Gras, aren't you.
I think it's cruel for force feed geese unless they are the geese that shit where I want to walk.
I've always been curious about something: I can't remember ever seeing smudgy foreheads before ...maybe college? I was surprisingly old.
My theories are:
- kids don't get smudged, only adults?
- kids don't get smudged before school, they wait till later in the day?
- kids are embarrassed and wipe it off early in the school day?
- Catholics are fewer or less observant in north Florida?
Since it's always a Wednesday, it's easy for me to believe I never saw anyone besides people at school, maybe a soccer coach, and my own family.
Kids do get "smudged". There are services at varying times of day, but usually not early enough in the morning that a kid could go before school. I never heard that it's forbidden or anything to wipe your forehead later, but most people don't seem to. But even if you don't wipe the ashes off, it often fades pretty quickly as you go about your day. I don't know about Florida, but getting the ashes is not required by the Church.
55
As a kid, we got smudged but always in an evening service.
That would be an ecumenical matter!
I think it would be especially easy to notice the ashes on a college campus. Working people would tend to go in the evening (or very early) but students can go to the Ash Wednesday service in the middle of the day on campus.
Call it Easter difference, or Easter divergence, or "hey, people celebrate Easter on different days."
The Easter Ouster. The Paschal Hassle. The Crucifixion Contradiction. The Harrowing Rowing. The Big Tent for Lent. The Bun(ny)fight.
As a kid attending a Catholic school, we always got ashes in a morning mass, attended by the whole school. And yeah, it just sort of disappears as you do kid stuff all day.
On college campuses, at least part of what's going on is there is a Certain Kind of Catholic, generally of the more conservative type, who is really Loud and Proud to Be Catholic While At College, Even Though We Non-Sex-Having True Believers are a Tiny Minority of Students. And those folks definitely seem to want to flaunt their religion, including making sure the ashes are visible for all the other students to see.
(Man, I feel like an asshole having written that. But it's definitely a thing.)
61.2: definitely. I remember one of them at my college who was also, and not coincidentally, loudly pro-Franco. (This in 1995. I am not that old.)
Did anyone point out that he was still dead?
The U.S. supporters of Franco never caught on because their organization reminded everybody of canned pasta.
61
For some reason I always get some of those Catholics in my classes. A couple of years ago I had a kid like that who wore button up shirts unbuttoned about three buttons, with a three-inch silver crucifix necklace nestling in his chest hair.
65: I thought that was why it did catch on.
63
My boyfriend's grandmother still loves Mussolini. She also thinks unmarried women who live with their boyfriends are puttanas, but she was nice enough not to directly call me that to my face, at least not in English.
Is she fine with married women who live with their boyfriends?
67
Mindset-wise, I'd say 1905. I had to teach him, among other things, Durkheim on religion, Foucault, Freud, Beauvoir, Fanon, and Dubois. It was fun times. Never have I had a student who both genuinely wanted to do well in the class yet who was so resistant to any point of view not already his own.
Just style-wise, it's been ages since I've seen a man with a collar that far open. I see plenty of men wearing crucifixes, but usually as a pin or over their shirt.
A couple of years ago I had a kid like that who wore button up shirts unbuttoned about three buttons, with a three-inch silver crucifix necklace nestling in his chest hair.
Was he easy in a ski lodge, and easy on a yacht, and easy on the beach?
Along with 30, I am really skeptical that the Orthodox would go for a revised Easter calculation. In Russia, the calendar absurdity extends to calculating a religious observance of New Year's Day using the Julian calendar -- so you can go to church for a special mass for "Old New Year," two weeks after the regular New Year. This is a church that had a major, centuries-long split over whether you cross yourself with two fingers or three and spell their version of the name of Jesus with one "i" or two.
Russian letters are really confusing, what with the backward 'E' and all.
My favorite thing about Easter and Passover is that there can't have been a solar eclipse then, because Passover happens during a full moon but solar eclipses can only happen during new moons.
I suppose that will mean an end to the movable feast that if Beefster, my made up hamburger-themed holiday. Really it's been supplanted by my other made up holiday at this point. One can only make up so many holidays before one begins to look at bit eccentric.
My favorite thing about Easter and Passover is that there can't have been a solar eclipse then,
It was a miracle!
I think it's only Beefster and sycnretic Partonnukah. I also helped invent Mow the Lawnnuakh but have never celebrated it. Schmutz Wednesday doesn't really count because it turned out lots of people have had the urge to say "hey hold still...you've got some...some schmutz on your forehead."
If there's a Schmaltz Wednesday, I want the soup.
Seconding 61, although I recall there being a general attempt to preserve the ashes since they're unusual and hence neat. A kid going to Catholic school in the suburbs generally wouldn't have many interactions with non-Catholics during the day, so it wasn't to flaunt the religion, which is already obvious enough from the uniform and all. I do remember once going to the supermarket with my parents afterwards and feeling overly-visible.
Beefster also works for the schism name.
A kid going to Catholic school in the suburbs generally wouldn't have many interactions with non-Catholics during the day, so it wasn't to flaunt the religion, which is already obvious enough from the uniform and all.
Really? Is suburban Catholic school over there not like Catholic school over here, full of rich atheists/protestants?
Not in my experience. Most of the Protestants I see in Catholic schools are black, though I suppose that is different in the suburbs.
85
Beefster schism...that sounds like a terrible porno.
Like, I'm not even sure if that would be a noun or a verb.
The discussion reminds me of my son's complaint a few years ago that when Chanukah and Christmas are too close together, he gets fewer presents. Neither side of the family was all that sympathetic.
Also, David Sedaris has a riff somewhere about how his family celebrated Orthodox Easter because in the week after the predominant Easter, they could buy all the plastic eggs and such at 50% off.
Sometimes it's more than a month off. Then the Peeps would be stale.
71, Buttercup - interested in learning the subject matter, not just in grades?
I am _ridiculously_ indignant about the proposed change in scheduling Easter, given how far I am from being Christian. It's like how annoyed I am by videogame physics increasing hang time.
I don't see the problem.
clew does a totally convincing Roadrunner impression.
This is a foolish idea. It ain't broken. Anyway it isn't pegged to the sun and the moon but to a set of tables that were derived from the sky gods' actions. This has broken in the past and the calendar is what got fixed. (Except for the Easterners who stuck with the old calendar and who are really out of synch with the skies. But even, then so what?)
I am glad to read that the person from Whitby says this is a smokescreen for the Anglican Communion's community problems and not a real issue.
Apparently I'll be in Bavaria on Shrove Tuesday. Also Rosenmontag. Maybe I should drink some beer?
Isn't there some pagan holiday they can coopt again? Maybe aim for the vernal equinox?
Is that the one where you burn Nic Cage in a giant basket-man? I think we want to keep that untouched.
93, Probably mostly motivated by the grade (he was pre-med), but in a way where he cared how to do it right. Like, he'd come to office hours to do a postmortem on a terrible paper to figure out how to do it better next time, and then in again with an outline before the paper was due. He talked a lot in class and was genuinely struggling to understand the readings. He...just never got anywhere. The most memorable terrible clunker was after a rough time with the concept of "feminism," I was nervous about Fanon,* so I was pleased and surprised when he raised his hand and said he'd enjoyed Fanon more than Beauvoir. I asked why, and he said, "well, he wasn't as shrill as she was." That was one of those "head on the desk" moments of teaching.
*Like, if you can't accept fairly mild arguments that rich smart white women should be treated roughly the same as rich smart white men, how are you going to respond to an angry impassioned call for an armed uprising against white supremacy?
98 - the Middle Eastern churches have wanted to sort the thing out for a long time (insofar as they want to change which isn't really that much), mainly because not even being able to agree on the date of Easter is a shande fur di goyim. Rereading, it doesn't sound like the Orthodox were all that enthusiastic about the idea and the Russians will probably tell everyone to fuck off if it gets that far & the other Orthodox will go along with them.
In other news, Beemerville is my new favorite town name.
I want badly to comment on this, but not as badly as I want to wrap up some paperwork and depart from my screen.
106: sadly, 4/20 doesn't fall on a Sunday until 2025.
Really? Is suburban Catholic school over there not like Catholic school over here, full of rich atheists/protestants?
Not really. I think we just have many more ethnically Irish/Italian/Polish/German people than you do. Also Hispanic, but there were very few Hispanic people in my suburban Catholic elementary school; quite a few in the urban Catholic high school, though. (I imagine there's a urban ethnic difference your way, too, i.e. urban Irish in Glasgow and Liverpool.) I presume rich Protestants here either go to non-denominational private schools or boarding schools.
further to 109, there are a couple of private /independent schools, but *most* Catholic schools are parochial schools with lower tuition.
Isn't there some pagan holiday they can coopt again?
Easter (the name, not the mythology) was coopted from the pagans, so it's a bit tricky to superimpose another one. A lot of modern pagans celebrate the Vernal Equinox under one name or another, and the old Germanic festival called something similar to "Easter" was probably that. So if they move Christian Easter to the vernal equinox, it would have the advantage of simplicity.
Personally, as an unbeliever, I'm in favour of keeping the present system, golden letters and all, because meaningless hangovers from the middle ages are fun, as long as they don't harm anybody. There's a village in England where they still use the three field system. Long may they continue!
Not sure why the s/ware chose to anonymise that.
Lots of other languages use a name for Easter that is based on the Hebrew word for Passover. Even in English, you see some of this (i.e. the Pascal Feast). I just assumed this was because the English have always been assholes about not using words from other languages unless they can murder them, but maybe there's more to it.
103: the opinionated academic had a student a few years back who insisted on writing "Ad majorem gloria Dei" at the end of each page of work he turned in. wanted to be a Jesuit, IIRC.
That said, if you absolutely had to join a monastic order...totally the Society of Jesus. I mean, if you're going to do this stuff you might as well go for the brass ring.
115. Not least because they're far from monastic, as generally understood. Boring old Cistercians don't get to explore late Ming China, found utopian republics in Paraguay, or be the only cool pope ever,
To be fair, fewer than 1 in 15 Jesuits founds any republic, utopian or not.
114
Would he put it in a footer? Or hand write it in?
In insular majuscule, gilded and edged in turquoise.
114 is so great. Tempted to use that to sign off on all social media postings.
115. Not least because they're far from monastic, as generally understood. Boring old Cistercians don't get to explore late Ming China, found utopian republics in Paraguay, or be the only cool pope ever
Also invent/discover the Big Bang theory.
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