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Easter in Italy Pasqua Resurrection Day Date of Easter Tradition

Easter, Pascha, or Resurrection Day, is the most important religious feast in the Christian liturgical year. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the third day after his crucifixion some time in the period AD 27 to 33. Many pagan elements have become part of the celebration, and those aspects are often celebrated by many Christians and non-Christians alike.

Easter also refers to the season of the church year called Eastertide or the Easter Season. Traditionally the Easter Season lasted for the forty days from Easter Day until Ascension Day but now officially lasts for the fifty days until Pentecost. The first week of the Easter Season is known as Easter Week or the Octave of Easter.

Easter is termed a movable Christian holy day because it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. Easter falls at some point between late March and late April each year (early April to early May in Eastern Christianity), following the cycle of the moon.

Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover not only for much of its symbolism but also for its position in the calendar. The Last Supper shared by Jesus and his disciples before his crucifixion is generally thought of as a Passover meal, based on the chronology in the Gospels.^[1] Some, however, interpreting "Passover" in John 18:28 as a single meal and not a seven-day festival,^[2] interpret the Gospel of John as differing from the Synoptic Gospels by placing Christ's death at the time of the slaughter of the Passover lambs, which would put the Last Supper slightly before Passover, on 14 Nisan of the Bible's Hebrew calendar.^[3] According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "In fact, the Jewish feast was taken over into the Christian Easter celebration."

Date of Easter

Easter and the holidays that are related to it are moveable feasts, in that they do not fall on a fixed date in the Gregorian or Julian calendars (both of which follow the cycle of the sun and the seasons). Instead, the date for Easter is determined on a lunisolar calendar, as is the Hebrew calendar.

In Western Christianity, Easter always falls on a Sunday from March 22 to April 25 inclusive.^[18] The following day, Easter Monday, is a legal holiday in many countries with predominantly Christian traditions. In the Julian calendar used by Eastern Christianity, Easter also always falls on a Sunday from March 22 to April 25 inclusive, which in the Gregorian calendar, due to the 13 day difference between the calendars between 1900 and 2099, are dates from April 4 to May 8 inclusive.

The precise date of Easter has at times been a matter for contention. At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 it was decided that all Christians would celebrate Easter on the same day, which would be a Sunday. It is probable that no method of determining the date was specified by the Council. (No contemporary account of the Council's decisions has survived.) Instead, the matter seems to have been referred to the church of Alexandria, which city had the best reputation for scholarship at the time. Epiphanius of Salamis wrote in the mid-4th Century:

"...the emperor...convened a council of 318 bishops...in the city of Nicea...They passed certain ecclesiastical canons at the council besides, and at the same time decreed in regard to the Passover that there must be one unanimous concord on the celebration of God's holy and supremely excellent day. For it was variously observed by people...".^[19]

The Council of Nicaea, however, did not declare the Alexandrian or Roman calculations as normative. Instead, the council gave the Bishop of Alexandria the privilege of announcing annually the date of Christian Passover to the Roman curia. Although the synod undertook the regulation of the dating of Christian Passover, it contented itself with communicating its decision to the different dioceses, instead of establishing a canon. Its exact words were not preserved, but from scattered notices the council ruled:

• that Easter must be celebrated by all throughout the world on the same Sunday;
• that this Sunday must follow the fourteenth day of the paschal moon;
• that the moon was to be accounted the paschal moon whose fourteenth day followed the spring equinox;
• that some provision should be made, probably by the Church of Alexandria as best skilled in astronomical calculations, for determining the proper date of Easter and communicating it to the rest of the world.

It took a while for the Alexandrian rules to be adopted throughout Christian Europe. The Church of Rome continued to use an 84-year lunisolar calendar cycle from the late third century until 457. The Church of Rome continued to use its own methods until the 6th century, when it may have adopted the Alexandrian method as converted into the Julian calendar by Dionysius Exiguus (certain proof of this does not exist until the ninth century). Early Christians in Britain and Ireland also used a late Roman 84-year third century cycle until the Synod of Whitby in 664, when they adopted the Alexandrian method. Churches in western continental Europe used a late Roman method until the late 8th century during the reign of Charlemagne, when they finally adopted the Alexandrian method. However, with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by the Catholic Church in 1582 and the continuing use of the Julian calendar by Eastern Orthodox churches, the date on which Easter is celebrated again deviated.

The rule has since the Middle Ages been phrased as Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. However, this does not reflect the actual ecclesiastical rules precisely. The reason for this is that the full moon involved (called the Paschal full moon) is not an astronomical full moon, but an ecclesiastical moon. The difference is that the astronomical vernal equinox is a natural astronomical phenomenon, while the ecclesiastical vernal equinox is a fixed March 21. Easter is determined from tables which determine Easter based on the ecclesiastical rules described above, which approximate the astronomical full moon.

In applying the ecclesiastical rules, the various Christian Churches use 21 March as their starting point from which they find the next full moon, etc. However because Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches use the Julian Calendar as their starting point, while Western Christianity uses the Gregorian Calendar, the end point, the date for Easter, may diverge.

Easter Holiday in Italy

Buona Pasqua - The History and Tradition Of Easter In Italy

When does the Easter celebration begin? The Nicean Council decided in A.D. 325 that Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first Full Moon to rise after the Spring Equinox. Unless the first full moon also rose on a Sunday, in which case Easter would be celebrated the Sunday after that. For over 1500 years we have continued to mark the celebration of Easter based on these calculations.

Although Carnivale officially starts in January and lasts up until Ash Wednesday (the first day of Lent), the last three days before Lent are especially festive. Carnivale can probably best be compared to Mardi Gras, and the Shrove Tuesday (Martedi Grasso) celebrations are similar to those of Fat Tuesday.

Pancakes are a traditional Shrove Tuesday feast food. Older church doctrine decreed that Catholics give up more than meat dishes for Lent - eggs, milk, and even fats were also restricted for the observant. Because Shrove Tuesday is the last day until Easter that people could spoil themselves (and in order to use up the dairy products and fats in the home so they wouldn't go to waste) pancakes soon became a traditional Shrove Tuesday feast.

Lent (Quaresima) marks the forty days of fast and abstinence before Easter. Lent is marked with the Feast of St. Joseph (Festa di San Giuseppe) on March 19th and Palm Sunday (Domencia della Palme), in which palms and olive branches are blessed by the parish priest and given out to the congregants. Many churches still follow the tradition of having the priest knock three time from the outside of the closed church doors to symbolize Jesus' entry in to Jerusalem.

EASTER MEALS IN ITALY

Traditional Easter meals vary from region to region, but eggs and roasted lamb are common elements everywhere. Eggs represent life, fertility, and renewal, all of which are essential symbols of Easter. Dyed eggs grace many Easter tables, and eggs are often found in soups and in a traditional Easter pie (Torta Pasqualina). Roasted lamb, as a symbol of birth and the Shepard, is a traditional main course. Chocolate bunnies are not common, but beautifully decorated chocolate eggs are a traditional Easter treat and gift! The official Easter cake is the Eastern Dove (Colomba) that represents peace

Easter Monday, also known as Little Easter (Pasquetta) is also an official Italian holiday that is often spent enjoying the fresh Spring weather with family and friends in picnics. The Racing Of The Egg (Palio dell'Uovo) is a traditional Easter Monday game in the town of Tredozio. And in Barano d'Ischia, a traditional dance called the Festa della Ndrezzata takes place on the same day.  

BEST WEBSITE ABOUT EASTER IN ITALY:

pasqua-italia-easter-italy

cestino-pasqua-Uovo di Pasqua

Colomba di Pasqua

easter_egg_UOVO DI PASQUA CON SORPRESA