Comments on: Fixing the date of Easter?

By: Howard Bird

Howard Bird — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:31:47 +0000

1 Easter should be fixed to the date of the passover of AD 33 (it can’t be difficult to work that out)
2 In a multifith society linking public holidays to religious celebrations is bound to cause resentment. Let religioud dates stand alone and those who wish to adhere to them be given leave so to do. The rest can just treat it as a normal day. And I say that as a practising Christian!

By: ladytizzy

ladytizzy — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 05:07:30 +0000

Stuart, we may have a Christian state but I would argue that we don’t have a Christian nation. Further, half of current public holidays have no connection with Christian festivals; the other half are more closely associated with pagan events, hijacked by the Christians as alluded to by Barbelo.

By: Barbelo

Barbelo — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:33:05 +0000

What would the godess Oestre make of it all?

By: Stuart

Stuart — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:15:02 +0000

This feels like a seminar! I guess that an effect of not separating them is further to bolt Christianity, through the official marking of Christian events, into our national life. Now, of course, we are officially a Christian nation, and so one might argue that that should be respected in decisions such as this, and that would therefore mean that the event and the public holiday should be kept together.

By: lordnorton

lordnorton — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:40:21 +0000

There are two separate issues. One is deciding the date of Easter. The other is whether it should be separated from a public holiday. We have a public holiday to celebrate May day but it is not necessarily on May day itself. The Queen’s official birthday is marked by Trooping the Colour, which is always on a Saturday.

Ladytizzy thinks the event and the public holiday should be separated, as I infer does Stuart. What are the arguments against?

By: Bedd Gelert

Bedd Gelert — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 12:23:11 +0000

Surely ‘variety is the spice of life’, so let us keep it as it is ?

As for those who say that Christmas is on the same date every year, perhaps we could tie that to the cycle of the moon, and have some years with two [in January and December] and some years where we might be spared the farrago altogether.. Just a thought..

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:08:43 +0000

For those who are interested, there’s a graph on Wikipedia that shows the distribution of Easter dates, and how rare this year’s early date was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Easter_Distribution.png

And for the really geeky, the article explaining it all is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computus

By: Craig Beaumont

Craig Beaumont — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:54:13 +0000

Didn’t the League of Nations try to fix this anachronism in the 1920s?

By: Stuart

Stuart — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:09:35 +0000

I can never remember when Easter is, so, yes, please do name the date and keep it fixed each year. Like 1p off the basic rate, it won’t transform my life, but it’d be nice.

By: CommonSenseAlliance

CommonSenseAlliance — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:28:54 +0000

*I meant Julian calendar, sorry!