georginasand | It's a little bit funny (Reply)

"It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside and I'm not one of those who can easily hide" ~Elton John

Easter hasn't come this early since 1913 and won't again for 152 years (2160). Most people will tell you that Easter comes forty days after Shrove Tuesday, but in reality Shrove Tuesday comes forty days before Easter. It's all a matter of counting backwards. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, which keeps it from falling before the 21st of March, the 22nd is fair game, and Shrove Tuesday is 40 days earlier.

It’s not the only holiday doing freaky calendar things this year. Passover calculations are slightly less complicated (Passover falls on the 15th of the Hebrew month Nisan) until you figure in the part where the Hebrews calendar is lunar not solar. Therefore, the Hebrew calendar's year is longer by about 6 minutes and 25²⁵/₅₇ seconds, meaning that every 224 years, the Hebrew calendar will fall a full day behind the modern fixed solar year, and about every 231 years it will fall a full day behind the Gregorian calendar year. So how do we compensate... well, the western leap day was a good one but too subtle... how's a leap month sound? Every couple of years (wikipedia "Metonic Cycle" for more info, it puts Easter and Election Day calculations to shame) the last Hebrew month of Adar happens twice.

Most years Easter and Passover overlap, and it is believed they did the first time all this came around. (I am also fairly certain Luke looked up from editing the minutes of the Last Supper and said, "Wow, today is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, same time next year guys?"). That always seemed to fit in my mind. They are two holidays centered around similar themes (sorry Mr. P, redemption is only one word), celebrated by people whose histories have been intertwined since "In the beginning." I've never put much stock in numerology, but the liturgical words: Pesach (Passover) and Paschal (Easter) are two letters away from being the same word, and Pascha is directly derived through Romance languages from Pesach.

But this year, because of calendrial kookiness, the two holidays are about as far apart as they get. I have had too many years of hardcore lit. analysis to not see the symbolism, or the irony. These two holidays, as connected as they seem in theme and orthography, are diametrically opposed to each other. And, unfortunately, their celebrations are mutually exclusive. You can't do both, I've tried. In the years that they overlapped, "doing both" means not eating hot crossed buns because they are chametz or eating them and screwing up the anti-leavening bit. In the years when they don't overlap it means realizing that Mr. Jesus of Nazareth is either your Lord and Savior, or not. There are no alternating Thursdays, only days ending in "y."

So I'll eat hot cross buns tomorrow and bitter herbs on the 20th of April and be grateful that the stars aligned in my favor. But I can't imagine that this is how it is supposed to go down.

I remain,
Georgie