Easter 2022: date, traditions, interesting facts

In this very difficult year for Ukraine, Easter will be celebrated on April 24th. This is one of the oldest and brightest holidays for all Christians. The Bright Resurrection of Christ Ukrainians make the top three holidays of the year, and celebrate it on a par with the New Year and Christmas. I would like to hope that together with the Bright Resurrection of Christ, peace will return to our lives.

Each of us from childhood knows the main traditions of Easter: paint eggs, bake Easter cakes, go to church and commemorate the dead. However, in reality there are many more such traditions. Among them there are common Christian customs, and there are unusual beliefs characteristic of different countries.

Why is the date of Easter different every time?

The date of Easter is always tied to the lunar calendar / istockphoto.com

Many people wonder why Christmas and Epiphany are celebrated on a specific date, and Easter falls on a different date every year. Priests explain it this way: most Christian holidays are celebrated according to the solar calendar, and therefore are "fixed". Easter is one of the few holidays that has long remained tied to the lunar calendar adopted by the ancient Jews. The lunar calendar, unlike the solar calendar, has only 354 days. Therefore, the day of Easter changes all the time in relation to the calendar year we are used to.

At the same time, there are clear rules for calculating the date of Christ's Resurrection. They were adopted by the Church of Alexandria back in the 3rd century at the first Ecumenical Council, and since then have been strictly observed:

• Easter never comes before the vernal equinox (March 20)
• Easter is strictly celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
• Christians can't celebrate Easter before Jews
• Easter is not celebrated after April 25 (May 8 in the Gregorian calendar)

According to these rules, the date of Easter is calculated by Catholics, and Orthodox Christians. And on different dates, Bright Day falls because the Catholic Church uses the Gregorian in its calculations. calendar, and the Orthodox calculates Easter according to the Julian calendar (the so-called "old" and "new" styles reckoning).

Earliest and latest Easter

Late Easter always marked the late arrival of spring / istockphoto.com

This year, Orthodox Christians celebrate perhaps the latest Easter in the last hundred years. Later, Bright Day was celebrated only in 2013, when Easter fell on May 5th. On the very last day possible for celebration (May 8), Easter fell only once: in 1983. We will again meet a record late Easter in 2078.

The earliest Easter according to the Orthodox calendar was celebrated only once: on April 1 in 1668. Also, only once Bright Day fell on April 2 (in 1600). On April 3, the holiday fell twice (1611 and 1763), and on April 4 - as many as 9 times (the last in 2010).

There is a folk sign about the weather associated with the date of Easter. Meeting this day from year to year, our ancestors noticed: the later the date of the Bright Sunday of Christ falls, the later the climatic spring comes. Believe it or not, everyone's business. But this year seems to have been written off from the national weather calendar: weather forecasters predict that real warming will come to Ukraine after May 5.

What does the word "Easter" mean in translation

"Easter" is a slightly modified version of "Pesach". This is the name of the Bright Day among the Jews. The Jews themselves lead the meaning of this name to the word "pasach", which in translation means "passed by, bypassed, passed by." It recalls the day of deliverance of the Jews from Egyptian slavery, when the Lord destroyed all the firstborn of Egypt, bypassing the Jewish houses (Book of Exodus). In the Christian tradition, the meaning of the word "passover" has been transformed and means the transition of the human soul from death to a new, heavenly life. There is also a version that the word "Easter" came from the ancient Greek "Easter", which meant "suffer". It reminds us of the suffering that Jesus Christ endured on the cross.

Why are eggs painted at Easter?

According to legend, the Virgin Mary entertained the baby Jesus with krashenki / istockphoto.com

Painted eggs, along with Easter cakes, are one of the main attributes of the Holy Resurrection of Christ. They are believed to symbolize resurrection and new life. In the Christian tradition, the egg resembles the Holy Sepulcher: outside is a dead shell, from which life can come out at any moment. Why you need eggs for Easter color? There are many legends associated with this. The most common of them is the story of how Mary Magdalene came to the emperor Tiberius. In those days, it was imperative to visit the emperor with a gift, and poor Mary brought Tiberius a chicken egg as a gift. When she told the emperor about the Resurrection of Christ, he exclaimed: “I don’t believe it! If so, let your egg turn red before my eyes. At the same moment, the egg changed color, confirming the veracity of Magdalene's words.

Another legend tells that it was with painted eggs that the Virgin Mary entertained the baby Jesus instead of toys. According to the third version, the custom of painting eggs arose earlier and is associated with the birth of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Before Aurelius was born, one of the chickens of the imperial court laid an unusual motley egg. This was considered a lucky sign, and since then it has become a tradition among the Romans to congratulate each other with colored eggs. Christians interpreted this custom in their own way, and began to paint eggs in honor of the Easter holiday. Initially, the dyes were red, in memory of the fact that Christ atoned for the sins of mankind with his blood.

What beliefs are associated with Easter eggs

Previously, Easter eggs were kept in the house for a whole year / istockphoto.com

Since ancient times, krashenki were not only brought to each other as a gift. The Slavs had a custom to “roll out the earth”: roll Easter eggs around the field so that the soil was fertile and the harvest was enough until the next Easter. On that day, one egg was necessarily put into the hand of the deceased, so that in the next world he would bring it to the Lord as a gift from all mankind. People believed that eggs dyed for Easter had a special power, so they kept them in the house for a whole year as protection from diseases, from fires and from the invasion of parasites.

One of the main entertainments for children on Easter was the "rolling": the children gathered at a gentle slope and rolled eggs down. Whose egg rolls the farthest in the competition, he was considered the winner. By the way, "pokatushki" are popular not only among the Slavs, but also in America. In the US, children also roll Easter eggs on a sloping lawn. The American president often takes part in this "people's" competition: a lot of spectators always gather for "rides" near the White House on Easter.

What does easter mean

Easter cake symbolizes the Holy Sepulcher and the temple with domes / istockphoto.com

Easter cake (in many regions of Ukraine it is called "Paska") is also considered a symbol of the Holy Sepulcher. Traditionally, when baking, its top is watered. glaze and decorate with dried fruits, candied fruits or confectionery powder. This symbolizes the domes of temples - church domes that rise to the sky. However, the very tradition of baking Easter cakes came to us not from Christian rites, but from paganism. The Slavs baked "spring bread" long before Easter, and brought it as a gift to the earth in order to appease it for a generous harvest.

The world's largest Easter cake was baked in Yekaterinburg in 2019 - it weighed almost 4 tons and was included in the Guinness Book of Records. In Ukraine, a giant Easter cake was baked in 2011 in the village of Yalta, Donetsk region: this miracle of confectionery art weighed 2 tons and reached a height of 2.4 meters.

How Easter is celebrated around the world

Easter bunnies came to us from Germany and Austria / istockphoto.com

Each country has its own special traditions associated with Easter. Sometimes they are fundamentally different from how we celebrate Christ's Bright Resurrection.

• AT Sweden all little girls on this day should become Easter witches. Witches dress in black rags and go from house to house with copper teapots and collect treats in them.
• AT Bulgaria on Easter it is better not to walk under the windows: in the morning, the Bulgarians throw painted clay pots on the ground in honor of the victory of good over evil. The skull can be taken away for good luck - it is believed that it will bring good luck to the finder.
• One of the main characters of the Catholic Easter - easter bunny - from Germany. Before the holiday, the Germans hide eggs and gifts “from the rabbit” in the house, and the children must find them in the morning and collect them in an Easter basket.
• AT USA At Easter, it is customary to give each other baskets of eggs and sweet treats. Among the usual dyes, an artificial egg with a question or a good wish must be hidden
• In countries Latin America At Easter it is customary to make an effigy of Judas. He is hung on a gallows or on a cross and solemnly burned. Sometimes the scarecrow is “stuffed” with fireworks from the inside, and the ritual of burning turns into a festive salute.

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