Why isn’t Easter on the same weekend each year?
It seems that in Western cultures, the Easter dates are based on a lunar calendar very similar to the Hebrew calendar and way back in 325 AD they started to set the Easter dates based on the first Ecclesiastical full moon after March 20. Does that clear it up for you?
I wonder if anyone has told Mother Nature about this sophisticated arrangement.
She is probably just as busy as any other mother and I’m sure she would be more than happy to have it set on the same weekend every year.
After all, March and April are very tricky weather months and while she is popping up daffodils in Vancouver she is still dumping snow back east and moving the Easter days around each year is no doubt a very real source of irritation to her.
Nature’s changes are constant and controlled by forces that do not have the constraints of calendars or clocks. We, however, need to have some sense that we are in control.
We move our clocks ahead and back to suit our needs or we add a day once every four years. But the tides come and go, the sun rises and sets and the moon waxes and wanes over us the same as it did for the cavemen.
We can imagine nature putting her shoulder to that terrible rock of winter and pushing it aside to allow the sun and warmth to resurrect the colours and beauty of spring, making us all feel alive again coaxing us from our drab, dark caves.
Perhaps it’s the time of year to set aside rocks and boulders in our backyards and parks and once again plant new seeds in our gardens and our communities.
The four-day Easter weekend is a welcome break. The fact that it comes later this spring will surely be a boon for the hardware and gardening stores as folks hope the skies will clear and the temperature warms up, so we can finally start working outside.
I need that warm sun to coax me outside. After all, when there is hockey, baseball, golf and curling on the TV all at once, you don’t feel quite as guilty sitting inside channel surfing when it is pouring rain.
But the stores are all geared up for Easter with chocolate and gifts.
I noticed large chocolate bunnies, a chocolate Spiderman and Batman and many chocolate Disney characters.
I even saw an ad for ‘vegan chocolate’ and I bet if I looked long enough I could find chocolate eggs that were filled with soy instead of gooey cream. But in all those displays, I never saw one chocolate cross. I
suppose the store didn’t want to risk offending anyone.
The message we get at this time of year is that we all get a second chance, make the best of it. At least that’s what McGregor says.