strange holiday timing

[cellio]

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.)

Comments

[siderea]

I know a Messianic Jew. Should I ask?

[aliza250.livejournal.com]

I wonder how interfaith families address this.

I don't know of any interfaith families that bother observing un-fun holidays like fast days.

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure all Christian denominations fast on Good Friday. Many do, but I'm not sure all do.

Still, what a strange coincidence! Two things that just don't go together. :-)

calendar info

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

Well, there are some calendar oddities that actually rule out a couple days (Wednesday and Friday, IIRC), but mostly Pesach is unconstrained.

Each holiday has 3 days it can't be/start on; Pesach's are (*pauses to consult 200-year calendar*) Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The reason for this is that the way the Jewish calendar is set up now, the days of the week for all the holidays are interconnected. (My parents have a Haggadah which includes a note about how to figure out the day of the week for each holiday based on the days of Pesach, with the condition that it's the Purim before that Pesach but the rest of the holidays are the ones following that Pesach. This is because the adjustment factor for days of the week is in whether the Rosh Chodesh-es of Kislev and Tevet have one or two days, with 1-1, 1-2 (but not 2-1), and 2-2 as the possible combinations.)

The reason for these specific 3 not-allowed days is that Yom Kippur is not allowed to be on Friday or Sunday (don't want it right before or right after Shabbat because of Shabbat+fasting sequence), and Hoshana Rabba isn't allowed to be on Shabbat (because of one of its special ceremonies; the exact details have slipped my mind just now).

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

So, does Purim fall on the Thursday-evening-Friday-day, or Friday-evening-Saturday-day?

Not that either would be particularly convenient for an inter-faith couple, but at least the former scenario would allow the fasting Christian to revel it up with the Jewish spouse on Thursday night, and then just sit quietly on Friday, nursing a hangover with water, and not really evincing all that great an interest in food anyways...

[vonstrassburg.livejournal.com]

Like every easter, I plan to be at Rowany Festival at Easter, and plan to celebrate Purim most properly by drinking heavily and feasting somewhat.

Then again, I'm not exactly an "inter-faith family".

The last few years have been good in a way because I've been able to celebrate Pesach at festival.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

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.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

I wonder if any of them celebrate minor holidays like Purim. If so, I wonder how they will resolve the contradiction this year.

There are two calendar-based solutions that come to mind, the first being to redefine Easter to be "the day after the sabbath that falls during passover", the second being to use the Julian calendar and celebrate Easter a week later.

[anniemal.livejournal.com]

This conversation is interesting, makes my head hurt, and me relieved to be mostly an atheist. Whew! How do you all_do_it? I'm impressed.

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

I would doubt that a Christian group that would celebrate Good Friday would also be mindful of Jewish observances, since the two types are on the opposite ends of the Catholic-Protestant spectrum.

[goljerp]

I have a Chineese friend who had a similar problem this year: Ash Wednesday (solemn day, apparently) fell on Chineese New Year (festive day). He's in the process of becoming Episcopalian, so this was the first time he'd had to really make this decision. I'm not sure what he did.