Someone commented to me recently about how early Lent is this year, with Ash Wednesday falling on February the 6th. We exchanged a few emails discussing it. He’d thought that it was as early as it could possibly be; but that isn’t in fact the case. Although I wouldn’t have known that had there not been some discussion on one of the COIN email lists that I subscribe to.
The very early, and very late possible dates that it can fall on are extremely rare.
The next year Ash Wednesday and Easter will be on the same dates as this year, February 6th and March 23rd, is 2160. However the earliest possible is February 4th and March 22nd, but the last year they fell on those dates was 1818, and the next is 2285 — no one reading this is likely to see it; unless someone in a couple of centuries time someone is using The WayBack Machine to read my blog, which is highly unlikely.
The apparent anomaly with the dates for Ash Wednesday being two days apart when the dates for Easter are only one day apart is because both this year and the year 2160 are leap years.
The latest possible dates for Ash Wednesday and Easter are March 10th and April 25th: the last year they fell on those dates was 1943, and the next is 2038. We get close to that in 2011 when Ash Wednesday and Easter will be on March 9th and April 24th.
The full cycle of Easter dates will repeat every 5,700,000 years.
I came across a fascinating article by Bosco Peters on his Worship Blog today. In it he talks about how we get the date of Easter, and why there can be two dates for Easter around the world, separated by more than a month. Well worth a read; you can find it here: Worship Blog
Entries (RSS)