ABOUT EASTER AND THE CALENDAR

From the far-North to the south, the East to the West the moon has been used as a measure of time. It has been used to tell seasons, mark anniversaries and various functions that are observed every year. The various phases of the moon led to the innovation of the calendar that is widely used today. However, coming up with the calendar has not been easy. By the time the first calendar was devised, little was known about the earth and it revolution around the sun. People did not know how many days there are in a year or even leap year. This led to the discrepancy in the making of the calendar by various populations inhabiting different parts of the world. People came up with calendars that were suited to serve their purpose in the regions they resided. As travel and communication between various parts of the world improved, there need to come up with a universal calendar. Religion and civilizations were instrumental in uniting people around the world and so was the need for a calendar acceptable the world over. This led to divisions in the some religions as they failed to agree on the interpretation of the moon phases and the calendar to be used. In order to come up with an acceptable calendar, adjustments were constantly made to the calendars that were available as they discovered the discrepancies in them when they failed to deliver and as people gained knowledge of the moon and seasons. Some religions and civilizations refused to follow the widely accepted calendar and even today follow calendars that were made long time ago.

Here is the chronological order of events that resulted in modern calendar and also the Easter Holiday.

Everywhere we find relics of mythic, mystic, romantic meanings as people hail the new moon; “moonstruck”, “lunatic”, “moonshine” connecting the moon with measuring.

The word “moon” in English and other cognate languages are rooted in the base me meaning measure.

Despite its use as a measure of time it proved to be a trap for naïve mankind.

It didn’t give what the farmers and hunters needed most-the calendar. The wanted to know how long before planting time, when to expect the first frost or the heavy rains.

The cycles of the moon are caused by the moon’s movement around the earth at the same time the earth is moving around the sun.

The moon is elliptical and departs by an angle of about five degrees from the earth’s orbit about the sun explaining why eclipses of the sun do not occur every month.

The ancient Babylonians started with the lunar calendar and stayed with it. They discovered the Metonic cycle around 432 B. C. of nineteen years. However, it was too complicated for everyday use.

The Egyptians were the first to discover the length of the solar year and to define it in a useful practical fashion. They had no astronomical instruments not already well known to the ancient world.

In Greece each city state made its own calendar arbitrarily “intercalating” the extra month to mark a local festival or to suit political needs to defeat the very purpose of a calendar. A calendar held the people together, eased the making of common plans such planting of crops and delivery of goods.

In Egypt, the annual rising of the Nile River set the calendar of sowing and reaping with its three seasons: inundation, growth and harvest.

The primitive Egyptian calendar was a “nilometer”- a simple vertical scale on which the flood level was yearly marked. They found out that adding five more days to the twelve months thirty days each would make it more useful to make a year 365 days. They called the “civil” year or the “Nile year”.

They also had other signs: Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest star in the heavens.

Since the solar year was not a 365 days, the Egyptian year of 365 days over the years became a “wandering year” with each named month occurring in a different season. The discrepancy was so small and took many years to affect the daily living. It was used through the middle ages and was used by Copernicus in his planetary table in the sixteen century.

The Jews preserve their lunar calendar and each Jewish month begins with the appearance of a new moon. And to keep in step with the seasonal year the Jews have added an extra month for each leap year.

In the Bible most of the months retain their Babylonian rather than the Hebrew names.

Christianity following Judaism for most religious anniversaries has kept its tie to the lunar calendar. For example “Easter-Day” which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus is always the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon or next after the twenty first day of March and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter-Day is the Sunday after.

The bitter quarrel over the calendar led to one of the earliest schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Church of Rome over the interpretation of the  of the Bible that fixed the death of Jesus  on a Friday. If the anniversary was to follow the Jewish lunar calendar there is no assurance that Easter would occur on a Sunday. A meeting in Asia Minor was called to come up with a uniform date to stay with the lunar calendar and assure that Easter would always be observed on a Sunday.

This did not resolve the matter, for community planning someone had to predict the phases of the moon, the task was given to the bishop of Alexandria.

The reform of the calendar was done by Pope Gregory XIII. The actual solar year- the time required for the earth to complete an orbit around the sun is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds which was less than the Egyptian year of 365^1/₄ days. The leap year of the old Julian calendar was readjusted to prevent the discrepancy with the Egyptian calendar omitting the leap day from years ending in hundreds unless they were divisible by 400. This led to the modern calendar that is still used by the west today.

The whole Christian world shares the solar calendar that serves the convenience of the farmer as well as the merchant.

In the west, the calendar might seem like just a system of chronological bookkeeping but has proved to be one of the most rigid of human institution.

In 1911 in china, a revolution brought a reform which introduced the calendar of the west alongside the traditional Chinese calendar.

In 1940 after the Soviet Union wanted to dissolve the Christian year in 1929 by replacing the Gregorian with revolutionary calendar returned to the familiar Gregorian calendar.

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 Daniel J. Boorstin. 1983. The Discovers. The Temptations of the Moon.Random House, New York. Pg: 6-12.