March 28 - Palm Sunday

March 28 – Palm Sunday!

Hosanna in the Highest! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna!

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week. For most Christians, we have been preparing for this week since Shrove Tuesday / Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday.

The date for each of these days is determined by the date that is set for Easter.

Easter had been celebrated since the early days of the church. The specific date was always up in the air though and debated for centuries. For a long period of time, the date for Easter was set on Nisan 14 – the beginning of Passover according to the Jewish calendar. However, that meant that it wouldn’t necessarily be celebrated on a Sunday.

Polycarp (a disciple of John, the author of the Gospel, three letters, the Revelation and a disciple of Jesus) accepted that date as the proper date for celebration, but others in the Roman church held out until the Sunday following.

The only way many of the Christians at this time knew to set the date for Easter was to rely on their Jewish friends to tell them when Passover would begin.

This became much too unreliable a method. The Jewish calendar and the Julian calendar were quite different and calendars around the world were not yet uniform.

At the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, a decision was finally arrived at which would set the date for Easter independently of the date of Passover. However, arriving at the date for Easter does not depend on the Gregorian or the Julian calendar, but the movement of the sun and moon, which is exactly how the Jewish calendar is created.

For this matter – Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox.

It will occur between March 22 and April 25.

Some fun stats on the dates for Easter are taken from Wikipedia’s article on Easter: Easter last fell on March 22 in 1818, and will not do so again until 2285. It fell on March 23 in 2008, but will not do so again until 2160. Easter last fell on the latest possible date, April 25, in 1943 and will next fall on that date in 2038. However, it will fall on April 24, just one day before this latest possible date, in 2011. The cycle of Easter dates repeats after exactly 5,700,000 years, with April 19 being the most common date, happening 220,400 times or 3.9%, compared to the median for all dates of 189,525 times or 3.3%