Passover how is date determined

During a Jewish leap year an additional month of 29 days is inserted before the month of Nisan. The additional month is needed because the Jewish calendar year has less days than the solar year and begins to slip out of gear with the seasons. The extra month thus realigns the Jewish calendar year with the seasons of the solar year. This is important because the Jewish holidays are closely related to the seasons.

For example, the Torah commands that Passover be celebrated in the spring. Every so often the Jewish leap year will push Passover so far into April that a second full moon following the vernal equinox would appear before the Sunday following Passover. This happens anytime the Sunday following Passover falls later than April 25th on our calendar.

On those rare occasions Easter is celebrated the month before Passover rather than the Sunday following Passover. The early church was faced with the following conflict in dates: Jesus rose on a Sunday, but Passover can fall on various days of the week. So every year, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service announces whether to add a leap second in order to align Earth time with solar time.

The United States officially opposes this practice. Read: Do you know about the leap second? The three calendars occasionally line up in strange ways. In and , the first night of Passover fell on Good Friday. And as it happens, the first night of Passover can never fall on Maundy Thursday, even though that holiday commemorates a seder. I imagine that for most Americans, the occasional mismatch between Easter and Passover is a curiosity, an oddity of religious history.

Consider the traditional foods served at that Christian ritual meal—the poached eggs, the toast with jam, the make-your-own waffle. All the really good ones, alas, have leavening in them, and thus we can only consume them three years out of every Freedom from slavery and a nice family brunch are joyous enough, of course. But freedom from slavery, brunch with family, and permission to eat pancakes? As we say, Dayenu. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. And this is just the beginning!

It is a rather complex calculation to figure out which day of the calendar the first day of Passover falls on. I recommend that you do not do this with paper and pencil. These constructs allow the date of Easter to be calculated in advance rather than determined by actual astronomical observances, which are naturally less predictable.

See also A Tale of Two Easters. The Council of Nicaea in established that Easter would be celebrated on Sundays; before that Easter was celebrated on different days in different places in the same year. See also dates of other Christian movable feasts. The Orthodox church uses the same formula to calculate Easter, but bases the date on a slightly different calendar?

Consequently, both churches only occasionally celebrate Easter on the same day.