Nicaea 2025 Part 3: Why do Christians Celebrate Easter on Different Dates?
This post is part of our Faithfully Asked Questions series, in which we provide answers to common questions of faith. In this Lenten season, we are presenting a special series on church unity, as we celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed and a shared Easter date for all Christians in 2025. Have a question you want answered? A story to contribute? Email Matt at mcomer@ststephenumc.net.
In our Nicaea 2025 series so far, we’ve explored the history of Church unity through the significance of the first worldwide council and the Nicene Creed which it created. The Council of Nicaea contains another historically significant contribution to our faith — a common calculation, to be used worldwide, for the date of Easter.
In 2025, Christians of nearly all denominations and traditions will celebrate Easter on the same day, Sunday, April 20. This isn’t always the case… though it was at one time… before which it wasn’t. Confused? Let me explain…
A Short History of Easter Dating Schemes
Easter is a moving feast — its date varies each year. This is because the date of Easter is based, in part, on the date of the Jewish Passover, which also moves. (You may remember that Jesus’ crucifixion occurred the day before Passover.) Prior to the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, the date for Easter moved according to the Jewish calendar and the calculation for when Passover should occur. This caused confusion because of uncertainties in the Jewish lunar calendar, resulting in some Jews (and Christians) celebrating Passover (and Easter) on different dates in a single year.
So, the church leaders gathered at the Council of Nicaea adopted a new formula for determining Easter, independent from the Jewish lunar calendar. The formula they adopted is still the formula all Christians use today. Glossing over some more detailed peculiarities, the Nicene calculation for Easter is: The first Sunday following the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. (An important note: the “spring equinox” here is not the astronomical equinox; it is a fixed liturgical date, March 21, and thus ties this formula directly to a calendar.)
For the next 1,200 years, Christians around the globe celebrated a common date for Easter — even after the Western, Latin-speaking and Eastern, Greek-speaking churches split in the Great Schism of 1054.
Pope Gregory’s Julian Calendar Reforms
Another 500 years would pass after that Great Schism with Christians celebrating Easter on the same common date each year. Until, that is, the standard European calendar needed updating. Julius Caesar had reformed the old Roman calendar in 46 BC , but, over time, this calendar had again drifted away from the seasons of the year. Pope Gregory XIII, the bishop in Rome, instituted a new calendar reform (our current Gregorian calendar) that introduced revised rules for leap days and years to better align the calendar with the solar year. To bring the calendar back in line, 10 days were skipped between October 4 and October 15, 1582. The Eastern reaches of Christianity, under the leadership of the Eastern, Greek-speaking Patriarch of Constantinople, did not follow Rome’s and Western Europe’s lead. (To be fair, neither did many Protestant-controlled countries; Great Britain and its American colonies, for example, adopted the “new” calendar in 1752.)
From 1582 onward, the date for Easter, though calculated using the exact same formula, was different depending on whether your country or church used the “old” Julian or “new” Gregorian calendar. It remains so today, with the disparity growing from 10 days to 13 days. While Greece finally adopted the Gregorian calendar for civil purposes in 1923 (Yes! That late!), many Eastern Orthodox churches, including the Greek Orthodox Church and its largest branch, the Russian Orthodox Church, still use the Julian calendar to calculate the date for Easter.
This conflict between the Julian and Gregorian calendars also explains why we see “Orthodox Christmas” listed on January 7 on our calendars. Some Orthodox Christians have adopted the Gregorian date for Christmas, but others, including the Russian Orthodox, have not. That means their December 25 doesn’t occur until our January 7.
Toward a Common Date for Easter
Occasionally, the spring equinox and phases of the moon align just right to create a shared date for Easter, allowing most Christians in the world to celebrate the resurrection on the same day. That occurs this year, coinciding with one of those even-numbered, centennial-year anniversaries humans love to celebrate, in this case the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. While these shared Easter dates happen sporadically over time (the last time was 2017), this is the very first time since the East-West calendar split in 1582 that this shared date has occurred on a centennial anniversary of Nicaea.
Movements toward ecumenical, worldwide Church unity in the 19th century have influenced continued conversations on unity in the 20th and 21st centuries, along with calls to reform our Easter dating methods. Many denominational leaders have long desired that the Western and Eastern churches finally settle on a universally recognized, common date for Easter. The 1700th anniversary of Nicaea brought extra attention and added emphasis to these efforts, with conversations among a wide variety of leaders, including those at the World Methodist Council, the World Council of Churches (of which the United Methodist Church is a member), Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy’s Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople.
Even with most global church leaders in favor of a common date, exact agreements have yet to be reached. A hoped-for deadline of this year, previously discussed by Rome and Constantinople, may pass us by even with Pope Francis reiterating this hope as recently as January, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Other church leaders aren’t giving up hope yet, either. On April 3, the World Council of Churches released a new paper with renewed calls and proposals for moving toward a common date for Easter; some of its contents are reflected in an earlier webinar hosted earlier this year. (Watch it here, or at the bottom of this post.)
What has been proposed for a common Easter celebration?
Various proposals have been made for solving the disparity in our Easter celebrations. Greek Orthodox priest Stefanos Alexopoulos, director of The Catholic University of America’s Institute for the Study of Eastern Christianity, explained three simple scenarios and the problems with each:
The one option is that the Roman Catholic Church align its date of Easter with that of the Orthodox Church. While this would solve many inter-Orthodox problems, it would mean that the Roman Catholic Church would follow a calendar for Easter that is astronomically not accurate. In addition, many secular calendars of Western countries would have to be revised, as their schedule of holidays are tied to the Western date of Easter.
The second option is that the Orthodox Church aligns its date of Easter with that of the Roman Catholic Church. This is a non-starter as many Orthodox churches would refuse to do so, and would create further division among the Orthodox.
The third option is that both the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches seek an alternative common way of calculating the date of Easter, independent of the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. Such a decision would be very difficult to accept, as it would do away with a decision of an ecumenical council.
Pope Francis has stated he and the Catholic Church would be open to that third option, suggesting in conversations with the Coptic Pope Tawadros II that Easter might be celebrated on a fixed day each year, specifically the third Sunday of April.
Yet another option, proposed in 1997, would in essence swap the adherence to either the Julian or Gregorian calendars’ fixed observance of the spring equinox on March 21 and instead base the Nicene calculation for Easter on the meridian of Jerusalem. In this scenario, the numbered date on which Easter is celebrated might be different, according to the calendar being used, but the actual day itself would always be the same.
What do you think?
- What, if anything, does the disparity in our celebrations of key holidays like Christmas and Easter say about unity and division in the Church?
- Is there value in all Christians celebrating Easter on the exact same day each year?
- If global church leaders came up with a new formula or date agreement, would you accept the new Easter date? Do you think most other Christian traditions would?
- What about other holidays, like Christmas? Should we reform calendar conflicts and find a shared day of celebration for Christmas?
Stay tuned to next week’s final installment in our Nicaea 2025 series. We’ll reflect on what we’ve learned and how seeing unity in diversity allows us to live together as an Easter people.