Worldwide · April 5, 2026

Easter Sunday

The first Sunday after the first full moon of spring — which is why it moves.

What happened

Easter is the reason the calendar has a moving feast at all. In 325 the Council of Nicaea settled it as the first Sunday following the first full moon on or after the spring equinox, which is why it can fall anywhere between late March and late April and why working it out has its own name, the Computus. The English word is unusual: most languages use a form of Pascha, from the Hebrew Pesach, and the eighth-century writer Bede said the English name came from Eostre, a spring goddess. Bede is the only source for her, so that story is plausible rather than proven. Eggs and hares belong to spring and to fasting: eggs were not eaten during Lent, so a basket of them accumulated by Easter morning.

Why it stuck

It is the clearest example in the calendar of a date decided by the sky rather than by a number, which children find genuinely startling once they notice it.

What a family can do

Work out next year’s date together from the full moon before you look it up.

Questions to work through

1. Find the date of Easter for the next five years. Why is it never the same?
2. Eggs were not eaten in Lent. What would forty days of saved eggs look like?
3. Most languages call it Pascha. Find three, and where the English name may have come from.