How the Easter holiday is determined?
Sometimes it’s April. Sometimes it’s in March. Generally in early April.
I’d always wondered, but I finally looked it up because Easter seems way early this year. It all has to do with the full moon.
Easter is termed a movable feast because it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. Easter falls at some point between late March and late April each year (early April to early May in Eastern Christianity), following the cycle of the moon. After several centuries of disagreement, all churches accepted the computation of the Alexandrian Church (now the Coptic Church) that Easter is the first Sunday after the first fourteenth day of the moon (the Paschal Full Moon) that is on or after March 21 (the ecclesiastical spring, or vernal, equinox).
One more interesting trivia bit, the next time Easter will be this early will be in 2285 (I think). The earliest Easter fell in 1818, on March 22.