Orthodox Easter Celebration

The majority of guests and crew on this ship are Italian, so Catholic Easter was celebrated last Sunday. Our Romanian pals celebrate a week later, however.

Constantin and Maria invited us to breakfast to celebrate Orthodox Easter with them along with two Romanian crew members.

Maria even dyed some boiled eggs red for the occasion, then coached Larry and I through the Romanian tradition.

We each took an egg, and as we went around the table, we tapped the egg of the person next to us while saying, “Christ has risen” in Romanian. To which they would respond, “He has truly risen.”

It was fun, and we felt honored to be included in their traditions, even though I was raised Presbyterian and Larry’s an atheist.

Back to Easter, have you ever wondered why the date changes each year? It’s because Easter is the first Sunday after the first full Moon on, or after, spring equinox. (And if the full Moon happens on a Sunday, then Easter is the next Sunday.)

Up until 1752, England and her colonies used the Julian Calendar, even though people had realized that this “Old Style” calendar was out of sync with the astronomical year. The dates did not jibe with the solstices and equinoxes anymore, and people knew this since the late 1500s.

By the time England and her colonies finally switched from the Old Style calendar to the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, the calendar was way off. It had to be adjusted by deleting 11 days.

The Gregorian (aka New Style) calendar is still used today.

Even though most Catholic countries adopted the new calendar, Orthodox Catholics still calculate certain holy dates using the Old Style calendar.

That’s why Easter’s date changes, and why Catholic Easter and Orthodox Easter rarely fall on the same date.

Phew! That took a lot longer to explain than I thought it would…Read more