A Date With Easter

"It's too early for Easter" whines everyone this year, "why, there aren't any flowers blooming to flower the nave..." and so on we complain about a March 23 Easter.  While Easter can occur any time from March 22 through April 25, this is the earliest it has been observed since 1913.  Spring has barely arrived; who wants to celebrate the "Feast of Spring" while there is still the possibility of snow? 

Blame it on The Council of Nicea.  In AD325 leaders of the Christian world got together in Nicea at the invitation of the Roman Emperor Constantine to figure out what to do about the Arian Controversy (which was, basically, a fictional disagreement over whether Jesus did or did not, at some point, exist).  Three hundred or so Christian clerics showed up to decide what they did not and could not know - better known as to develop the party line so everyone could agree on what the "truth" would be.  The "truth" that was voted in became the basis for the Christian statement of faith appropriately entitled the Nicene Creed.  

Besides deciding the "fact" that Jesus always existed, making the Arian Controversay into the Arian Heresy, the Council also tackeled huge issues like prohibition of self-castration, deciding when to kneel during the liturgy and setting a date for celebration of the Resurrection.  While they probably got the self-castration issue right, they really messed up Easter.  Too bad they couldn't make it simple and say the first Sunday after April 21 or some such date.  Instead they decided on the following:

 The first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal (spring) equinox, which is now fixed at March 21.  

Ask any ten Christians how Easter is determined, and see if more than one or two can tell you.   Better yet, ask any ten Christians if there was ever a time when Jesus did not exist, and see the alternating blank stares and responses.  But let me warn you, people get a little sweaty about this issue, and overly orthodox religious leaders get downright mad about it.  So brace up for some irrational conversation if you enter that arena and recognize that people argue best over what they do not and cannot know.  It would also be wise to recognize that some of your poll participants may direct and manipulate you in the sweetest of ways by telling you that what they want you to do is God's will.  They know, you don't, because God told them, not some heretic taking a poll.  

Least you think me irreverent or a heretic, I am a Christian, and I will clean the stripped altar on Good Friday in accordance with the established date, but I may or may not be at an Easter service to recite the Nicene Creed.  What I can assure you of is that I have your number and know that you are psychotic if you tell me what God's will or plan is for my life because I know manipulation when I see it. 

So thanks guys, bundle up and have a happy Easter.