What is Orthodox Easter Sunday?
Orthodox Easter Sunday is the day on which Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. In Albania and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, countries with several large religious communities, it is a recognised holiday, alongside Catholic Easter Sunday for the Catholic community, so that the festival appears twice in the calendar in most years. The Orthodox Church in Albania and the Serbian and other Orthodox churches in Bosnia follow the same calculation as the churches of Greece, Russia and Serbia for the date of Easter. Together with the Western date, it makes Easter one of the few festivals shared across all the faiths in the region.
The celebration centres on the midnight service on Holy Saturday night. The faithful hold lit candles, exchange the greeting Christ is risen, and afterwards break the Lenten fast with eggs, lamb and sweet bread. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, as in neighbouring Serbia, red eggs are cracked against one another in a game, and the holy day is spent with the family. Visitors will find the old town centres quiet and the churches crowded. Easter Sunday itself is followed by Easter Monday and by Bright Week, during which greetings with Christ is risen are used in place of ordinary salutations.
Why it is observed
The calculation used by the Orthodox churches comes from the Julian calendar, which the Catholic Church abandoned in 1582. The rule agreed in tradition at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325, that Easter follows the spring equinox and the first full moon, is applied by Orthodox churches using Julian dates and an ecclesiastical equinox of 21 March in that calendar. Because the Julian calendar runs 13 days behind the civil one, the Orthodox date is often later than the Western date, and the two coincide only when the Julian and Gregorian calculations happen to lead to the same Sunday.
How the date is set
Orthodox Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after 21 March, using the Julian calendar for both the equinox date and the moon. In the civil calendar it falls between 4 April and 8 May, and it sometimes coincides with Western Easter and sometimes comes up to five weeks after it.
How it is observed
In Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the major religious holidays of each community are recognised in the public calendar, so employers, schools and public offices may close for one or both Easters, and the effect depends on the region and the community. The site shows the Orthodox date for Orthodox Easter and the Western date for Catholic Easter. Pay, substitute days and employer arrangements depend on the law and the contract. The site shows the Orthodox date for Orthodox Easter, which is why it usually differs from the Western Easter date shown for other countries.
Albania