Easter By the Numbers

I was shopping for Easter goodies yesterday. I usually don’t wait this late, but Easter crept up on me this year, falling earlier than usual.

I find the Easter calendar fascinating. Sometime ago I learned that it falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. I would spout this fascinating fact to anyone who cared and many who didn’t.

Come to find out I’m wrong. It’s actually after the first Paschal Full Moon. Nearly the same thing, but not exactly.

What I really find fascinating is that it will be another 152 years before it falls on March 23 again (and even longer before it falls on the earliest possible date, March 22–more than 400 years since the last time).

My birthday is on April 16. I was 37 before I ever had an Easter birthday. But it happened again 11 years later. And it will happen again 11 years after that. And 11 years later, God willing, I will turn 70 on Easter. That is probably my last chance, because some some odd calendar glitch occurs, and the next time Easter falls on April 16 is in 2090, the 132nd anniversary of my birth.

Go figure.