Saturday, March 15, 2008

A little rant about Easter

Just a short rant here.
This year Easter Sunday is the 23rd of March. This is relatively very early. This has caused havoc for education authorities in this country who have had to decide whether to have their 2 weeks 'Easter' break starting that weekend, or a few weeks later. Almost always, the school break encompasses the Easter weekend, but to do that this year would make the Spring term stupidly short and the Summer term stupidly long, so many areas are taking the bank holiday weekend off, then going back to school for just 9 days, and then having the 2 weeks holiday. Bit of a joke really.
The Christian festival Spring Harvest, which normally takes place over 3 weeks, has had to spread itself over 5 weeks to encompass the school holidays across the country.
On a more personal note, the halls of residence in which I live are closed for the bank holiday Easter weekend, as they always are. Fair enough. But this year, I need to stay there over the weekend because I'm still on teaching practice until the 4th of April (Durham having chosen the later option for the 2 week holiday). Therefore I'm having to go home for 4 days before rocketing back up to Durham for 9.
I said that March 23rd is very early for Easter. It's actually only physically able to be one day earlier - it can fall on any Sunday between March 22nd and April 25th according to Wikipedia. And you know how they decide? "Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox". So they find the Spring equinox, then find the first full moon after it, and make the next Sunday Easter.
Is it just me, or is this at least in the top 3 most stupid things in the world? Just fix it and save everyone the trouble! Easter should be the first Sunday in April (or whatever), and stay there. Then it'll shift by about 4 days, rather than over a month.
Someone make me king of the world and I'll sort it out.

2 comments:

Joe 50 said...

There was an brief little column in the Guardian that explained that the formula for deciding Easter was established by the Council of Nicea to STOP CONFUSION about when Easter should be celebrated (along with other important things like establishing the full-Godness of Christ). The article went on to praise the randomness of Easter as a delightful tradition and variation.

Unknown said...

I saw a similar article in The Times. I agree with the words 'tradition' and 'variation', but not 'delightful'. Try 'frustrating' or 'idiotic' maybe.