cellio | strange holiday timing

Most years, Pesach and Easter fall within a few days of each other. This makes sense, because the Christian event is understood to have fallen during Pesach. But because Christianity does not follow the Jewish calendar for setting the holiday, and both computations are lunar, when the holidays aren't a few days apart they're about a month apart, with Easter being first. Fine; everyone knows that, pretty much.

The holiday of Purim falls approximately a month before Pesach.

Easter is constrained to fall on a Sunday, but Pesach can fall on "any" day. Well, there are some calendar oddities that actually rule out a couple days (Wednesday and Friday, IIRC), but mostly Pesach is unconstrained.

This year Pesach happens to fall on a Sunday and Easter is early.

What does this all add up to? That the celebration of Purim, a day on which feasting and drinking are commanded, falls on good Friday, a fast day.

I have heard that there are Christian denominations that observe some Jewish practices, like the seventh-day aventists who celebrate the sabbath on Saturday. I wonder if any of them celebrate minor holidays like Purim. If so, I wonder how they will resolve the contradiction this year. For that matter, I wonder how interfaith families address this. (A similar problem arises in the winter, when a Jewish fast day can fall on Christmas.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As I recall it, at least in the Roman Rite, major solemnities take precedence over minor ones, so on Good Friday (one of the most major solemnities there is) you fast. But in many cases, the minor solemnity is not simply cancelled: its observance is shifted to an adjacent day, either before or after. Since (a) Holy Saturday is generally considered Not A Good Day For A Feast, and (b) Purim actually begins on Thursday evening, if I were in this position I'd shift the observance of Purim to Holy Thursday, which at least is not a fast day. The other alternative would be to shift it to Easter Monday, which seems less good an idea for some unidentifiable reason.

But in many cases, the minor solemnity is not simply cancelled: its observance is shifted to an adjacent day, either before or after.

That makes sense. In fact, I now recall that Judaism even has a similar principle: if a fast (other than Yom Kippur) falls on Shabbat, you move the fast to Sunday instead. Yom Kippur trumps even Shabbat (this happened this year), but otherwise you do not fast on Shabbat.

(I know of one fast that moves earlier instead of later: on the day before Pesach, first-born fast. If Pesach is on Sunday (that is, first seder Saturday night), that would mean fasting on Shabbat -- but you don't fast on Shabbat and this fast must occur before Pesach, so it moves to Friday.)

This may be a difference between Orthodox & Reform, but as far I know, when a fast gets moved earlier (because otherwise it would be on Shabbat) it gets moved to the preceding Thursday, not Friday, because of the general disapproval of fasting right before Shabbat (as in Yom Kippur not being allowed to be on a Friday by the modern calendar) and the logic that once you're moving it earlier you can move it 2 days as well as 1.

No denominational difference there -- just a failure on my part to correctly recall what the calendar (physical or software) says in those cases.

strange holiday timing

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movable fasts

Re: movable fasts