Earliest (almost) Easter

The following came from my wife via a friend via who-knows. I’ve added some material and changed an incorrect date.

Easter this year is on Sunday March 23, 2008.

* As you may know, Easter is always the 1st Sunday after the 1st full moon after the Spring Equinox.
* (The date of the Easter full moon is determined by the motions of a mathematical “moon”; these motions approximate the movements of the real moon, but discrepancies occur for the sake of simplicity in the rules. Any such discrepancies are viewed as unimportant. For clarity, the calculated date is called the Paschal full moon.)
* This dating of Easter is based on the lunar calendar that Hebrew people used to identify Passover, which is why it moves around on our Roman calendar.
* Based on the above, Easter can actually be one day earlier (March 22) but that is pretty rare.

This year is the earliest Easter any of us will ever see the rest of our lives! And only the most elderly of our population have ever seen it this early (95 years old or above!). And none of us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier!

Here are the facts:
* The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be the year 2160 (152 years from now). The last time it was this early was 1913 (so if you’re 95 or older, you are the only ones that were around for that!).
* The next time it will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in the year 2285 (277 years from now). The last time it was on March 22 was 1818.
* So, no one alive today has or will ever see it any earlier than this year!

The odds are considerably better for witnessing a late Easter. Many people are still around from the last time Easter fell on April 25, an event which took place in 1943, and a good many people here today will likely still be around when Easter next falls on April 25, which will occur in 2038.

This ignores the Eastern Orthodox calendar, which is still based on the Julian calendar.

See also http://www.snopes.com/holidays/easter/earlyeaster.asp for more info.