Still confused about why Easter's so dang early this year? Unable to believe that spring technically has already arrived?
I thought I understood the whole dating of Easter, until I picked up Mapping Time, in an effort to understand why Passover is sometimes on a different timeline. Well! I guess I didn't know as much as I thought I did.
There are nearly 30 fine print pages on the dating of Easter and its fraught history, containing sentences like:
The 19-year Metonic cycle contains 12 common years each consisting of 12 months or lunations and seven embolismic years each containing 13 lunations.
In any case, I know understand -- sort of -- why Passover and Easter are sometimes nearly a month apart. The best story of the book:
Before the days of Google, an Englishman was wondering when Easter would occur the following year. Knowing that Easter depended on both the equinox and the lunar cycle, he contacted the obvious experts --astronomers at the Royal Observatory. The astronomers took his call and said they'd get back to him. They did -- after consulting the Book of Common Prayer.
