Recent reports in the media suggest that both Roman Catholic
Pope Francis and Anglican Archibishop of Canterdury, Most Rev. Justin Welby,
are prepared to discuss the possibility of changing the date of Easter. The
Coptic Orthodox Pope, Tawadros II, has said that he is also ready the join the
negotiations. I wonder what they would agree on - if they ever did.
The difficulty we face is changing the present calendar in
any way is a confusion of religious and secular measurements of the year. Our
present system was approved by Roman Catholic Pope Gregory XIII on February 24,
1582. That change from the ancient Julian calendar, established in 46 BCE by
Julius Caesar, occurred only in those states where papal authority applied.
Great Britain, a few other western European states and
Scandinavia demurred. No longer politically subservient to the Roman Catholic
Pope`s degrees they continued to use the Julian calendar for another two
generations. Not until 1752 did Britain and its American colonies accept the Gregorian
calendar we still follow worldwide.
At the same time Christian churches throughout Western Europe
and across the world retained their traditional liturgical calendars featuring
the beginning of the Christian Year as the First Sunday in Advent, the fourth
Sunday prior to Christmas celebrated on the 25th of December. That
made it possible for churches to celebrate the great festivals of Christmas and
Easter, as well as days for fasting and saints’ days throughout their special annual
cycle.
Not so the Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe and Western
Asia. Some of them still retained their practice of following the Julian
calendar. While Western Christians celebrate their Christmas on December 25th
and the secular world generally celebrates New Year’s Day on January 1,
Orthodox Christians wait until January 6 for their Christmas celebrations.
Modern political, commercial and industrial activities have
not been particularly observant of any religious calendar. In this age of
widespread understanding of religious and cultural differences, each community
has its own calendar related to its specific culture. For instance, in 2016 the
Chinese New Year begins on February 8th. The Jewish New Year, called
Rosh HaShanah, begins at sunset on Sunday, October 2nd and continues
until Tuesday, October 4th. The Muslim New Year, Muharram, begins on
October 8th.
The date of Easter is also a problem. It follows the lunar
calendar. Traditionally the Christian festival of Easter and its associated
preparation of six weeks of Lent began on Ash Wednesday, a day of special penitence
set as the Wednesday of the week before the first Sunday of Lent. So this year
it began yesterday, February 10, so Easter will celebrated on March 27. In this
unusual order Easter Day was established as the first Sunday after the first
full moon following the vernal equinox by the Council of Nicea in 325.
I once wrote an article proposing a more orderly secular calendar
totally separate from any religious calendar or our present secular way of
measuring time. My proposal gave each month a full thirty days making an even
360 days in each year. Then, between the old and the new years, we all take a
five day universal vacation. That would still need one extra day every four
years, but surely no one would protest that.
The beauty of such a
system would definitively separate the religious and liturgical celebration of Christian
festivals from the secular and commercial calendar marking the end of one year
and the beginning of each new one. After all, it was the political influence of
Roman Catholic Pope Gregory XIII that established our current calendar in
February 1592. It would also separate other religious cultural celebrations of
a new year from our increasingly secular practices.
We still mark the beginning of a new year as January 1st
because in the Roman calendar that was the feast day of the god Janus from
which the name of the month is derived. Janus was thought of as a god who faced
both forwards and backwards. That is still a very human way of marking the new
year. At different times and in different cultures, the beginning of a new year
has also been celebrated at the spring or the autumnal equinoxes. But that
wouldn’t work except in the Northern Hemisphere. Even then it could vary as
much as three or four different days from year to year. We would still be in a
mess, wouldn’t we?