Re: OT: War on Saturnalia

Peter Besenbruch wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 09:24:12 -0700, dkomo wrote:
>
>
>>Stanley Friesen wrote:
>>
>>
>>>josephus <dogbird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>John Wilkins wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>As I recall, December 25 was chosen because the Roman confession
>>>>>accepted that Jesus was born God and man, and so the rebirth of the Sun
>>>>>was transferred from pagan rites (and public holidays) to Jesus' birth.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>A stupid question. When i was a kid, I learned that the Catholic Church
>>>>chose Christmas, Easter and All Saints to conflict and cover pagan
>>>>rituals and holidays. Is this not true?
>>>
>>>
>>>Well let's see, Christmas is the Festival of Sol Invictus, aka the
>>>Winter Solstice. Easter is, partially, the Dawn Festival, or Spring
>>>Equinox (though the date is determined by a variation of the Jewish
>>>calendar).
>>>
>>>
>>
>>It's interesting to know why the date of Easter bounces around so much
>>from year to year. The reason is that it is partially based on the lunar
>>calendar. To determine Easter follow these steps:
>>
>>1. find the date of the spring equinox
>>
>>2. find the date of the first full moon after the spring equinox
>>
>>3. find the first Sunday after (2); this is Easter Sunday
>
>
> As long as you realize you are dealing with liturgical full moons, not the
> actual full moons. To begin with, you need to calculate the year's Golden
> Number. This is based on a 19 year cycle. You take the number of the year,
> add 1, and divide it by 19. The remainder is the Golden Number. If there
> is no remainder, then 19 is the Golden Number.
>
> Then you need to find out the letter assigned to the year. Since there
> are seven days in a week, the Sunday letters range from a-g. If Sunday
> falls on January 1, The Sunday letter is A, and so on. It gets complicated
> by leap years, as the Sunday letter changes after February.
>
> You then typically match Sunday letter with Golden Number on a table. Me,
> I just check a calendar.
>

Isaac Asimov (of all people) had this to say about it:

"This was done [fixing the date of Easter] by allowing Easter to fall
upon the first Sunday after the first full moon coming on or after March
21 (the vernal equinox). The complication is that the full moon is not
the real full moon anyone can observe in the sky. It is, instead, an
imaginary full moon, called the Paschal full moon, which may come a day
before or after the real full moon. (The word "paschal" comes from the
Hebrew "pesach" meaning "passover." Easter comes at the Jewish passover
season and this word is a holdover from the time when most Christians
were of Jewish origin."

"The Paschal full moon must be calculated [loud groans can be heard --
dkomo] and this is done in a rather complicated fashion we needn't go
into here. I'll just mention that it involves giving each year a
"Golden Number" and a "Dominical Letter" and that both are used in the
calculations."

"The result is that Easter can fall as early as March 22 and as late as
April 25. For instance, Easter fell on March 23 in 1913 and will fall
on that date in 2008 once again. It was celebrated on April 25, 1943,
and we will have another chance (or our grandchildren will) to have such
a late Easter in 2038."


--Isaac Asimov, _The Clock We Live On_, p. 119-120


I used the real full moon in my examples. Since the paschal full moon
can be off by a day from the real full moon, I'd guess that using the
date of the real full moon will give you the wrong date for Easter on
average about once every seven years. Trouble is, when it happens
you'll miss Easter Sunday by a full week.


--dkomo@xxxxxxxx

.

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