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.

Doesn’t it say in the bible that women are not permitted to teach or assume authority over a man I think in 1 Timothy
(primarily about the church but it extended to life and home too)

As a rather sniffy theologian once told me, the whole fucking point of Christianity is the supernatural revival of Jesus from the dead. It's what makes him - and his religion - unique.

I am sure there will have been cases where people who were crucified were revived. Especially if the execution had been outsourced to the Roman equivalent of Capita. (I mean the tender for the 6,000 crucifixions during the servile revolt must have been a juicy one).

So even if physical revival is a possibility - it's not what makes Jesus special.

If you believe in all that. I mean people coming back from the dead does seem far fetched. But does explain the career of Peter Mandelson.

Factories? You know Christmas was celebrated before the industrial revolution, right?

I really think trying to use the Bible to explain Christianity rather loses the argument before it starts ....

And Orthodox follow a different calendar and take into account Easter is after Passover, which is why it differs to the catholic easter dates. This year it’s next Sunday and next year it’s early May.

Not the Christmas we know

This is my understanding too.
And the Christmas Day date is a pagan date

😂 yes I have found that

Strange that the catholic easter has happened before Passover again this year (which is this coming week). That’s why orthodox Easter is different again.

They have answered that haven’t they?
as with Easter being a time of remembrance rather than the actual day, it basically piggy backs on to a pagan celebration relating to winter solstice
which is determined by the solar cycle.

What is this pagan celebration people seem to imagine happened three or four days after the solstice?

Sol Invictus, saturnalia, Yule

It was a guess.
Making it a fixed (ie legal holiday) date rather than a changeable seasonal celebration?
That was why I asked..... because I didn't actually know.
Just like the OPs little students.
You know....the point of this thread 🤷

Someone did actually give an answer eventually.
It was some bloke in circa Year 300 who decided it.
(Christmas Day being fixed I mean)

Sol Invictus stated to be celebrated on December 25th in the late 3rd century, Saturnalia was held in the week before the solstice, Yule was a season name among people who didn't hear about Christmas for centuries after it started being celebrated (in or around the year 200).

The evidence of the chronology all suggests pagan Rome made some attempt to colonise and adopt the Christian celebration (and failed) not vice-versa.

Christmas was first formally celebrated on December 25, 336 AD, in Rome, during the reign of Emperor Constantine. While Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus earlier, this is the first recorded instance of an established, widespread celebration on this date, likely chosen to align with the pagan winter solstice festival, Sol Invictus.

Though being freaked out by eastern mystery religions in the mid-3rd century was more about whatever it was that Elagabalus had got up to than about Christianity. All of them got regarded as suspect after that.

In Rome. Christian Egypt was using the date well over a century earlier.

Until Constantine, Rome was not a friendly place for Christians.

I tried to say that in religious studies in my Catholic private convent and was told off and shut up pretty fast even though I said “but it’s true Miss!”. I’m Protestant. I fell asleep in scripture classes too but the old nun taking those was nice about it. And just laughed.

Maybe that’s why it was aligned? If it wasn’t a friendly place for Christians, maybe they celebrated their beliefs when others were celebrating so they could fly under the radar so to speak, and making it easier for others to follow?

It's almost like that is more important than his teachings, isn't it ?

I mean, yes, God says he wants us to be nice to one another. But only if it's not a Jew saying it.

My contempt for religion may be clouding my judgement, of course.

For some time, the Church laid down that Easter should not under any circumstances fall on tha same date as Passover. Must have made the calculations difficult and explains why the Pascal Moon bears no relation to that fellow planet which orbits us.

I don’t really understand this post.
Yule wasn’t a season name it was a winter solstice festival, in Germany (early Germany whatever that was called) and Scandinavia, it was adopted into the Christian tradition when those people became Christian.
I don’t understand what you mean about the romans being pagan and they colonised the Christian celebration - the romans brought Christianity to the people who were at that time pagan, the pagan traditions were changed to become Christian festivals.

I mean, the Romans who lived at the time of Christ weren’t Christians. They worshipped many deities. I think it was the 4th century before they adopted Christianity officially?

I looked in my printed diary to check when Easter was this year, and I looked in vain for "Easter Sunday". Then I saw "Good Friday" in tiny print on 3rd April, and "Easter Monday" on 6th April. How standards have fallen - Good Friday and Easter Monday were only mentioned because they are public holidays! It seems that the most important day of all did not even get a look in.

I must have missed this thread - I was distracted by the other thread full of frothing about the Easter story (which is still raging on).

Overheard in public: "I wish the government would decide on the date of Easter once and for all." And poor Uncle Quentin of the Famous Five was thwarted by the moving date of Easter. "But they've broken up so late this year!", because Easter came late.