The perpetual calendar
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From: António Marques on 19 Feb 2010 14:38 Halmyre wrote (19-02-2010 17:52): > On 19 Feb, 09:12, John Atkinson<johna...(a)bigpond.com> wrote: >> Halmyre wrote: >>> I just wish they'd settle on a date for Easter and be done with it. >> >> But, the whole point of Easter is that it has a full moon! You might >> as well scrap the whole thing otherwise. Or are you suggesting that >> we only take holidays at Easter every four years or so, when your >> “settled” date just happens to correspond with the right lunar phase? > > We don't have Christmas only when there's a bright star in the east. > > It's like saying "I was born on a Wednesday, so I'll only celebrate my > birthday when it falls on a Wednesday". Christmas is a feast that was established late, based on arbitrary convention, and of relatively minor religious standing (the feast, not the event it commemorates). Easter is the central feast of Christianity, would be an end in itself if nothing else, and of which all the particulars have the highest religious significance. (Regardless of whatever pagan festivals coincide with it in date or outward meaning.) Chocolate bunnies and eggs, you can put them everywhere you like, but that's not Easter.
From: Evan Kirshenbaum on 19 Feb 2010 15:15 Andrew Usher <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> writes: > On Feb 19, 11:49 am, Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenb...(a)hpl.hp.com> wrote: > >> > I think it was two years ago that the first night of Passover was >> > on Holy Thursday (or vice versa), which precisely reproduced the >> > historical occasion. >> >> Oh, that's what you meant. I though that you were talking about >> Passover and Easter actually occurring on the same day. But if >> Holy Thursday is taken to run from midnight to midnight (rather >> than sundown to sundown), I don't think that that's possible, since >> the Hebrew calendar doesn't let Pesach fall on a Friday (with the >> seder on the preceding Thursday night). > > In Christ's time, there was no such rule, clearly. Right. They would still have been depending on observation of the new moon to establish Rosh Chodesh, the first of the month, and ordering a leap month by fiat when it seemed to be necessary to keep Passover in the spring (Wikipedia says, plausibly, that this happened when the barley wasn't yet ripe at the beginning of what would have been Nissan (originally "Aviv").) I think that by then there may already have been rules that bumped certain months by a day to keep certain holidays (e.g., Yom Kippur) from falling on certain days (which is the actual reason that the modern calendar happens to never have Nissan 15 falling on a Friday), but they would have kicked in on the specific months in question (e.g., Tishrei for Yom Kippur). -- Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------ HP Laboratories |If all else fails, embarrass the 1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |industry into doing the right Palo Alto, CA 94304 |thing. | Dean Thompson kirshenbaum(a)hpl.hp.com (650)857-7572 http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
From: jimp on 19 Feb 2010 15:23 Cheryl <cperkins(a)mun.ca> wrote: > jimp(a)specsol.spam.sux.com wrote: >> In sci.physics Andrew Usher <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >>> On Feb 19, 11:52 am, Halmyre <flashgordonreced...(a)yahoo.com> wrote: >>> >>>>> But, the whole point of Easter is that it has a full moon! You might as >>>>> well scrap the whole thing otherwise. Or are you suggesting that we >>>>> only take holidays at Easter every four years or so, when your “settled” >>>>> date just happens to correspond with the right lunar phase? >>>> We don't have Christmas only when there's a bright star in the east. >>>> >>>> It's like saying "I was born on a Wednesday, so I'll only celebrate my >>>> birthday when it falls on a Wednesday". >>> The reason I fix Christmas to a Sunday has been my observation that >>> arranging a family Christmas is substantially more convenient when it >>> falls on a weekend than in the middle of the week. Given that >>> Christmas is the most important holiday in the year, should we not all >>> get at least a 3-day weekend, which we have for lesser holidays? >>> >>> Andrew Usher >> >> Less than around 30% of the world population cares about Christmas or >> Easter or think that "Christmas is the most important holiday in the year". >> >> > > But just about all of them in the northern hemisphere want a big break > in the middle of the winter, whatever the reason or name for the > holiday. I expect that the southerners would like a break in the middle > of their summer, but I don't know that myself. Why wouldn't both want the same breaks at the same seasonal times? Also, the vast majority of the Asian countries lie north of the equator and most Asians couldn't care less about Christian or Western holidays. -- Jim Pennino Remove .spam.sux to reply.
From: António Marques on 19 Feb 2010 15:38 Yusuf B Gursey wrote (19-02-2010 17:20): > On Feb 19, 10:59 am, António Marques<antonio...(a)sapo.pt> wrote: >> Yusuf B Gursey wrote (19-02-2010 15:35): >> >>> the Orthodox (Eastern) churches have a slightly different system. >>> dunno exactly what it is. >> >> Afaik the system is the same, it's March 21 that is different. > > but for the Orthodox, the Gregorian calendar has been accepted for > other holidays. the Monophysites (Copts, Armenians, Jacobite Syrians) > observe Christmas at a different date for other reasons. Don't tell them it's the gregorian calendar! It's the revised julian. Don't call the others monophysites, they prefer miaphysite. The Finnish Orthodox Church is said to have adopted the gregorian calendar. Of the other Orthodox, some have adopted the revised julian for fixed feasts but keep the julian for moveable ones. The moveable ones are the important ones. The use of two calendars wreaks havoc with the liturgical year.
From: Aatu Koskensilta on 19 Feb 2010 15:41
Ant�nio Marques <antonioprm(a)sapo.pt> writes: > The Finnish Orthodox Church is said to have adopted the gregorian > calendar. This is indeed so. -- Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta(a)uta.fi) "Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen" - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus |