How many days until Orthodox Easter?

About Orthodox Easter

Orthodox Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus as observed by Eastern Orthodox churches, marking the culmination of Holy Week within their liturgical calendar. Although it commemorates the same event as Western Easter, its date is often different because Orthodox churches calculate the date using the older Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar used in the Western calculation, and they also apply an additional traditional rule requiring Easter to fall after the Jewish Passover, a sequencing consideration rooted in the biblical narrative's timeline. As a result, Orthodox Easter can fall on the same date as Western Easter in some years, but more often falls one to five weeks later, and the gap between the two varies unpredictably from year to year rather than following a fixed offset. Both traditions still rely on a similar underlying formula tied to the first full moon after the spring equinox, but because the Julian calendar has drifted from the Gregorian calendar by a number of days over the centuries, the resulting full moon and equinox calculations diverge, producing different final dates in most years. Observance includes solemn Holy Week services, a midnight resurrection service marking the transition into Easter Sunday itself, and, in many Orthodox Christian countries, family gatherings featuring traditional foods and customs such as the cracking of dyed red eggs. A common misconception is assuming Orthodox and Western Easter are simply different denominational names for the same date; in most years they genuinely fall on different Sundays, a distinction that regularly causes confusion for those unfamiliar with the differing calendar calculations behind each tradition.

Dates on this page are checked against public calendar sources. Spot something wrong? Let us know.