EASTER, the annual festival observed throughout Christen dom in commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The name Easter, like the names of the days of the week, is a survival from the old Teutonic mythology. According to Bride (De Temp. Rat. c. xv.) it is derived from Eostre, or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, to whom the month answering to our April, and called Eostur-monath, was dedicated. This month, Bede says, was the same as the mensis paschalis, "when the old festival was observed with the gladness of a new solemnity." The root pasch, from which so many other names for Easter are derived, is from the Hebrew pisach (Passover) from the verb form "he passed over." There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the apostolic Fathers. The sanctity of special times was an idea absent from the minds of the first Christians, who continued to observe the Jewish fes tivals, though in a new spirit, as commemorations of events which those festivals had foreshadowed. Thus the Passover, with a new conception added to it of Christ as the true Paschal Lamb and the first fruits from the dead, continued to be observed, and became the Christian Easter.
Although the observance of Easter was at a very early period the practice of the Christian church, a serious difference as to the day for its observance soon arose between the Christians of Jewish and those of Gentile descent, which led to a long and bitter controversy. The point at issue was when the Paschal fast was to be reckoned as ending. With the Jewish Christians, whose lead ing thought was the death of Christ as the Paschal Lamb, the fast ended at the same time as that of the Jews, on the fourteenth day of the moon at evening, and the Easter festival immediately fol lowed, without regard to the day of the week. The Gentile Chris tians, on the other hand, unfettered by Jewish traditions, identified the first day of the week with the Resurrection, and kept the pre ceding Friday as the commemoration of the crucifixion, irrespec tive of the day of the month. With the one the observance of the day of the month, with the other the observance of the day of the week, was the guiding principle.
Generally speaking, the Western churches kept Easter on the first day of the week, while the Eastern churches followed the Jewish rule, and kept Easter on the fourteenth day.
A final settlement of the dispute was one among the other reasons which led Constantine to summon the Council of Nicaea in 325. At that time the Syrians and Antiochenes were the soli tary champions of the observance of the fourteenth day. The decision of the council was unanimous that Easter was to be kept on Sunday, and on the same Sunday throughout the world, and "that none should hereafter follow the blindness of the Jews" (Socrates, H.E. i. 9). The correct date of the Easter festival was to be calculated at Alexandria, the home of astronomical science, and the bishop of that see was to announce it yearly to the churches under his jurisdiction, and also to the occupant of the Roman see, by whom it was to be communicated to the Western churches. The few who afterwards separated themselves from the unity of the church, and continued to keep the fourteenth day, were named Quartodecimani, and the dispute itself is known as the Quartodeciman controversy.
Easter day is the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. This, of course, varies in different longitudes. A further difficulty occurred in the attempt to fix the correct time of Easter by means of cycles of years, when the changes of the sun and moon more or less exactly repeat themselves. At first an eight years' cycle was adopted, but it was found to be faulty, then the Jewish cycle of 84 years was used, and remained in force at Rome till the year 457, when a more accurate calculation of a cycle of 532 years, invented by Victorius of Aquitaine, took its place. Ultimately a cycle of 19 years was accepted, and it is the use of this cycle which makes the Golden Number and Sunday Letter, explained in the preface to the Book of Common Prayer, necessary. Owing to this lack of decision as to the accurate find ing of Easter, St. Augustine tells us (Epist. 23) that in the year 387 the churches of Gaul kept Easter on the 21st of March, those of Italy on the i8th of April, and those of Egypt on the 25th of April ; and it appears from a letter of Leo the Great (Epist. 64, ad Marcian) that in 455 there was a difference of eight days between the Roman and the Alexandrine Easter.
The ancient British and Celtic churches followed the cycle of 84 years which they had originally received from Rome, and their stubborn refusal to abandon it caused much bitter controversy in the 7th century between their representatives and St. Augustine of Canterbury and the Latin missionaries. These latter unfairly attempted to fix the stigma of the Quartodeciman observance on the British and Celtic churches, and they are even now sometimes ignorantly spoken of as having followed the Asiatic practice as to Easter. This, however, is quite erroneous. The British and Celtic churches always kept Easter according to the Nicene decree on a Sunday. The difference between them and the Roman Church, at this period, was that they still followed the 84 years' cycle in corn puting Easter, which had been abandoned at Rome for the more accurate cycle of 532 years. This difference of calculation led to Easter being observed on different Sundays, in certain years, in England, by the adherents of the two churches. To Archbishop Theodore is usually ascribed the credit of ending the difference in the rest of England in 669.
The Gregorian correction of the calendar in 1582 has once more led to different days being observed. So far as Western Christen dom is concerned the corrected calendar is now universally ac cepted, and Easter is kept on the same day, but it was not until 1752 that the Gregorian reformation of the calendar was adopted in Great Britain and Ireland. Jealousy of everything emanating from Rome still keeps the Eastern churches from correcting the calendar according to the Gregorian reformation, and thus their Easter usually falls before, or after, that of the Western churches, and only very rarely, as was the case in 1865, do the two coincide.
Easter, as commemorating the central fact of the Christian religion, has always been regarded as the chief festival of the Christian year, and according to a regulation of Constantine it was to be the first day of the year. This reckoning of the year as beginning at Easter lingered in France till 1564, when, by an ordinance of Charles IX., the 1st of January finally took its place.
Four different periods may be mentioned as connected with the observance of Easter, viz., (1) the preparatory fast of the forty days of Lent ; (2) the fifteen days, beginning with the Sun day before and ending with the Sunday after Easter, during which the ceremonies of Holy Week and the services of the Octave of Easter were observed; this period, called by the French the Quin wine de Pdques, was specially observed in that country; (3) the Octave of Easter, during which the newly-baptized wore their white garments, which they laid aside on the Sunday of ter Easter, known as Dominica in albis depositis from this custom ; another name for this Sunday was Pasclia clausum, or the close of Easter, and from a clipping of the word "close" the English name of "Low" Sunday is believed to be derived; (4) Eastertide proper, or the paschal season beginning at Easter and lasting till Whit Sunday, during the whole of which time the festival character of the Easter season was maintained in the services of the church.
The liturgical colour for Easter was everywhere white, as the sign of joy, light and purity, and the churches and altars were adorned with the best ornaments that each possessed.
The Council of Nicaea, held in A.D. 325, decided that Easter should be celebrated on a Sunday, but we are left with a method of fixing the date of Easter by which it can vary from year to year by no less than 35 days, between March 22 and April 25. The date is fixed in accordance with the tables prepared by Clavius for Pope Gregory XIII., when he reformed the calendar on Feb. 24, 1582, and is an attempt to reconcile the solar with the lunar year, on the Metonic system, with all the complications of the week, the month, the epact and an inexact calendar. The tables occasion ally produce strange results. In 1923 the full moon of the heavens fell on the Sunday given by the tables for the celebra tion of Easter; and the Resurrection, going by the real moon, was being celebrated before the Crucifixion.
As regards No. I it may be stated that, though the matter can not be absolutely decided, the balance of opinion seems to be that the Crucifixion took place on Friday, April 7 A.D. 30, so calcu lating by Sundays, and in order to secure a date which can be very easily remembered, the second Sunday in April would appear to be an appropriate one, but it would be still more accurate to make Easter Sunday on April 9, if that day were a Sunday, or on the Sunday following April 9. Certain ecclesiastical difficulties would then be avoided and there would always be 24 Sundays after Trinity, and the whole ecclesiastical calendar would be ad mirably fixed.
The supporters of the reform point out that the celebration of the Birth of our Lord was fixed in the 4th century by enactment for Dec. 25, thus consecrating the old Saturnalia of Rome to the new religion, and that, this having been done, there is no good reason why the celebration of the Death and Resurrection should vary 35 days in accordance with a fictitious moon.
In 1928 again the question of a Fixed Easter bill was raised in parliament and a referendum to various European countries was advised. As a result of the League of Nations Committee of 1923, the Easter Act was passed in England, Aug. 1928, fixing Easter day, conditionally upon international acceptance, as the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. (See CHRONOLOGY.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church; Bede, Bibliography.-Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church; Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England; Lurtees Society, Rites of Durham, ed. J. T. Fowler 0903) ; De Morgan, Companion to the Almanac (1845) ; Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (19o1) ; A. Phillip, The Calendar (Cambridge, 1921) .