Among the many great Christian Orthodox holidays, Easter is the foremost. Celebrations of the celebration of the bright Resurrection of Christ are rolling, that is, there is no specific fixed date for Easter in the Orthodox calendar. This is due to the connection between the New Testament history and the Old Testament.
The holiday of the bright Resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Orthodox calendar can fall on one of the Sundays of the period from April 4th to May 8th. This is due to the Gospel story that on the eve of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Jews celebrated their Passover, which is a memory of the Jews leaving Egypt, as well as the preservation of the life of the Jewish firstborn during the last Egyptian execution by God to admonish the wicked Pharaoh.
The Holy Scriptures of the New Testament tells that the resurrection of Christ fell on the next Sunday after the Sabbath Jewish Passover. It was important for the Orthodox Church to preserve the historical sequence of the celebrated events. First, the Jewish Passover must pass, and only then the Resurrection of Christ comes.
The time of the celebration of the Jewish Passover depends on the solar-lunar calendar. According to the meaning of the Jewish lunar calendar, Old Testament Passover was celebrated on the 14th day of the month of Nisan (Aviva). At the time of the establishment of the Julian calendar in the Roman Empire, this event became a carryover - it fell on the first full moon after the vernal equinox (that is, after March 21, according to the old style). Thus, in order not to disrupt the sequence of the Gospel narrative that Christ was resurrected after the Jewish Passover, the fathers of the First Ecumenical Council (325) decided to celebrate Christian Passover on the following Sunday after the full moon. If we take into account the moment that the Jewish Passover could fall on the period from April 21 to 18 according to the old style (at this time the first full moon after the vernal equinox may fall), then the New Testament Easter Sunday, respectively, falls on the period from 22 to March 1st to April 25th old style (new style - April 4th - May 8th).
If the full moon fell on the day of April 18 on Sunday (that is, the Jews celebrated their Easter at this time), then the Christian celebration was postponed a week in advance (April 25 of the old style and, accordingly, May 8 of the new chronology).
At present, the so-called Orthodox Easter exists for several decades to come. This is a calendar that indicates the time of the celebration of Orthodox Passover following the Jewish holiday. So, in 2014 Easter was on April 20th, and in the coming 2015 - the main celebration of Orthodoxy will be celebrated on April 12th.
