Easter fluctuating dates confusion

[Soontobe60]

If Jesus Christ existed, he was supposedly born on 25th December and that date never changes. But he was crucified on Good Friday, which changes every year!
How come we know his birth date but not his death date?
When did the 25th December become known as Christmas Day?
When did the day he died become known as Good Friday and the day he rose Easter Sunday?

All questions my Year 4 children asked in school this week.

However Eid isn’t linked to something that has a concrete date , like the birth and death of someone.

It really should be no surprise that there is no consistency or logic to a fairy story.

I mean I am quite happy to accept that the Bibles generally should be taken metaphorically. However that doesn't suit everybody.

And I wouldn't bet on December 25th being universally accepted as Jesus birthday either.

Interested to know what kind of school the OP teaches in - church school, one with Christian ethos? How religion is taught varies according to the school obviously. Is a teacher in a Catholic primary school permitted to start talking to children about pagan borrowings and the parallels between belief systems? Wouldn't imagine it would go down very well if they did.

@Fafner ok then.....
WHY is Christmas Day the only major religious festival with a FIXED date.
What is the reason?

We don't know when Jesus was born. There were shepherds out watching their flock by night and that puts it at around September by our modern calendar. The 25thof December will be a Christian overlay of a pagan celebration which Easter also is. Oestara was a pagan celebration hijacked by the Christians and little to do with exactly when Jesus was crucified.

Just celebrate what you want to or indeed when you want to.

I read recently that in, I believe, 1929 there was a law passed in parliament to fix the day of Easter, but it was never implemented.

We don't know when Jesus was born.

Before that, we don't know if he was born.😀

Personally I'd accept it happened. But that is pretty much that for me. But at least I get to be that atheist who is happy to say "Jesus lived".

Sol Invictus

This!
The dc in her class are really asking why different systems for determining apparently Christian festivals relating to the life of Jesus.
And there is no simple answer, so why the rudeness @PunkTiger and @Fafner
I for one didn't know why Christmas was a fixed date and easter is a 'movable feast' determined by the moon.

Jesus was crucified at Passover which is determined by the lunar cycle hence why it changes each year. Maybe reading the original text would help with your knowledge of this subject if your students are interested.

Easter is why Copernicus was tasked with fixing the calendar and the Catholic Church having to accept the heliocentric nature of the solar system. Which some took as metaphorical, but hey - it worked anyway.

Now, where's my Julian calendar ?

You’d expect the people who were there to know the exact date though, wouldn’t you? Rather than a Friday at Passover.

It’s all a man made concept anyway, with man made reasons to “explain”.

He is fiction. His birth date is not in the bible, it was plonked around midwinter to coincide with exisiting (pagan) celebrations.

Why?

It's amusing and terrifying in equal measures how the messages of religion need to be "real" for the masses to follow them. It can temper respect for the mases.

i mean "Be nice to one another", because it's better for the species ? Away wi' ya !

"Be nice because a sky fairy says so and we can prove it" ? Tell me more ...

I didn’t say I didn’t know the answers to their questions, I was just posting about the types of questions my class asked when discussing Easter.

Indeed. Most of my class are Muslim.

Given Passover changes year to year, and the exact year isn’t know (only estimated at a later date) the exact date can’t be calculated

It’s a CofE school with a predominantly Muslim intake

The birth and death of someone to whom there are only two unbiased (ie non-Christian) historical references, though. The earliest account we have of the life of Jesus is short on specifics and was written several decades after his death. The whole BC/AD historical categorisation was only begun centuries later, and based on best calculations at the time. The date of Jesus’s birth is now widely accepted as around 4 BC.

He was raised as a Jew. The thing that defined early Christians as Christians was believing that Jesus was the son of God, which he did.

Why would this be relevant?

I wouldn’t expect a teacher to be answering questions about religion.

I don’t think it’s a stupid question. I think it’s reasonable to ask why we calculate a different date each year rather than simply using the calculated date that the crucifixion was on (isn’t 3rd April 33 widely accepted based on moon cycles, Passover dates, a Friday crucifixion?).

Especially since we’re willing to take a fairly certainly inaccurate birthday of Jesus.

Jesus death is seen as the fulfilment of the Passover when the lamb died to save the people, and Jesus died to save the people. So it being linked to the Passover, which was tied to the phases of the moon, was more important than the actual date so they kept it tied to that because that had the symbolic importance. As others have said, there’s nothing said in the Bible to anchor Jesus birth to a specific date and so a date was picked which seemed a good choice at the time. As pp have said probably to do with preexisting festivals and maybe a picture of light in the darkness

It’s very easy to look up these things.