Religion: Easter

Easter, the solemnization of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the most important date of the Christian calendar. It begins the ecclesiastical year, yet is a variable holiday fixed for each year by a complicated equation of epacts, dominical letters and Golden Numbers. It falls on the first Sunday after the Pascal full moon, that is, the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon on or after March 21 (the vernal equinox). Therefore Easter cannot come before March 22 or after April 25. This inconstancy of Eastertide has irritated money-grubbing merchants, who long have surreptitiously, indirectly exported the spirited, springtime* surge of joy, light and purity felt by celebrants. People have stepped from decorating their altars to decking their bodies, until the Easter Sunday “parade” of fashionables and fops gets more notice in the lay press than does the sanctity of the holiday. This display of clothes and flowers and jewels and carriages, wily merchandisers have gloated over. None the less they have peered with squinted eye at the fluctuating date of the festival, even as they touted a robe as “hot from N’ York, lady,” or “new from Paris, madame.”

Last week the Manhattan Merchants’ Association stepped into the clear; advocated a constant Easter; stated in a bulletin that the second Sunday in April “will be” the date it believes will be adopted; said further: “A late Easter often proves disastrous to sellers of many lines of merchandise because it shortens the spring season, thereby reducing the volume of business, while the lengthened winter season is of little benefit. With the adoption of a fixed date, all such difficulties will disappear. Clergymen were vexed.

* In Western Europe, the solemnization of the Resurrection early merged with the Teutonic spring festival in honor of Eostre, goddess of spring.