Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1892 — HOW TO TELL.IT. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HOW TO TELL.IT.

A Simple Explanation of the Changing; Eaater Date. ■

y that fully nderstand the reHUgious significance Easter know, of course, som e th i ng I the changeful- & nessof the date, but only a small percentage of them, perr haps, could satisfacI torlly explain the pyly Kzy [matter. If you 11 U ahould ask ten intel--11 * \ ligent people how far . the Easter date can vary, the chances are

that not one would be able to answer you correctly without first consulting a book of reference. The fact is that th 6 date varies more than a month, though many years elapse between ’the widest variations. It is possible for Easter to eohie as early as the 22d of March, and it may come as late as the 25th of April. In 1886, Easter fell on the 25th of April, but it will not again come so late as that until the youngest reader of these lines shall be old enough to be grandparents—in 1943. The moon’s monthly journey around the earth is the foundation of the eccentric Easter dates, just as the earth’s annual excursion around the sun causes the trouble that necessitates leap years. Easter is simply a Christian adaptation of the Jewish Passover. The word Easter dates,back farther than the time of the religious observances that now characterize’it. ; The Anglo-Saxon name of April was Eastern;onath, meaning the mqnth qf the spring morning, or the sun warmth, wtiiqh awthkeued Nature from its winter torpidity. The early Christians adopted this idea of Nature’s spring awakening to typify the resurrection of the Savior, just as the Jews used it to commemorate the events connected with the escape of their people from Egyptian bondage. But the antipathy of the Christians toward the Jews ia those early days led them to make an attempt to have the Easter observances always fall on dates •other than those that commemorated the Passover. The-system that we now have for fixing the Easter date is due to that attempt. After as much thought and calculation as was given to the tinkering erf the calendar a complete plan-was adopted, 'and here is an attempt to make it more intelligible in a few words:

It was determined, i® the first place, that Easter must invariably fall an the first Sunday .after the fourteenth day of the moon that happens to be reigning at vernal‘equinox time. Then it was declared that the date of the equinox should be arbitrarily made March 21, although the equinox really comes sometimes.a.little earlier or a.little later than "the 21st. For example, suppose the equinox moon is just fourteen days •old on the 21st of March, and that this day falls on Saturday—than the next •day, Sunday, -would fill the condition noted above, and ‘Consequently be Easter.

Of course you can readily perceive that so early an Easter date can very rarely occur. The Christian Easter was originally a sort .of ‘thanksgiving service, lasting eight - days. This conformed somewhat to the length of time devoted by pagans to their spring festivities, and‘approached the duration of the Jewish paschal observances. The eightday period was afterward-cut down to three’days, after that to two, and finally it became as we have it now, a day commemoratiTO of the resurrection.—NeW' York Press.