Easter
Easter Day, called by some Resurrection Day, marks the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ. Easter Day is the penultimate point of the Liturgical year. Every Sunday is considered a mini-Easter Day feast and that is why there is no fasting, even during Lent, on Sundays.
The season of Easter begins at sunset the evening before the movable feast of Easter Day and ends at sunset on the Saturday before Pentecost Sunday. The sixth Thursday after Easter Day is the Feast of the Ascension and Pentecost Sunday fall on the second Sunday after that. That period of time from Ascension to Pentecost has long been known by the now little-used name of Ascension-tide. In 2009 Easter Day falls on Sunday, 12 April, Ascension Day on Thursday, 21 May, and Pentecost Sunday on 31 May. Information on the method, which dates from the 7th Century Anno Domino, for determing the date of Easter Day and the other dates dependent can be found on pages 880-885 of The Book of Common Prayer 1979. Easter comes from an Anglo-Saxon word of varible spelling, Eastre/Eostre/Estera, that is the name of a Teutonic/Saxon female diety to whom sacrifices were offered in April. Just as Christmas replaced Natalis Solis Invicti, the Feast of the Resurrection replaced the annual sacrifices, but the Feast and the season that follows it managed to adopt the name of the event it replaced. The word Easter appears once in the scripture translation known commonally as the King James Version and properly as the Authorized Version, in Acts 12:4, but most modern translations use the more proper word "Passover" instead.
The liturgical colour of Easter is white, symbolizing purity and celebration.
