Holy Week 2026

You probably know it’s Western Easter, but many in the US and western world don’t know that in the Eastern Orthodox Churches it is Palm Sunday …

Why the difference? Here’s more than you probably wanted to know:

The reason has to do with the calendar, ecumenical councils, and of course politics. The date for the celebration of the resurrection of Christ was set by the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. They decided that the Resurrection of Christ (which later became known as Easter in the Western Churches due to the Germanic influences) should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. OK so far. They further decided to fix the vernal equinox as March 21st. That’s not exactly right, it can be a day off from that due to leap years, but close enough as long as everybody accepts that date as fixed.

What caused later problems is that at the time nobody thought much about the calendar itself because it was an imperial standard. The Earth takes 365.2422 days to orbit the sun. The Julian Calendar (created under the Julius Caesar) was a great improvement over the previous efforts by incorporating a “leap year” every four years to correct for that “extra” fraction of a day over 365 days exactly. That means the average Julian calendar year is 365.25 days long. Much better, but still drifts by 3.1 days every 400 years. That adds up over time, and by the 1500’s it was off by 10 days relative to the sky.

So Pope Gregory decided to reform the calendar. A team came up with a more accurate method that used the Julian Calendar’s leap years, but skipped leap years for years ending in zero. That makes the average year 365.2425, a drift of only 1 day every 4000 years. Catholic countries adopted it in 1582 under the Papal Bull Inter gravissimas.

Protestant countries refused to go along at first because it came from the Pope and even if it was a great idea there’s no way they could accept it because, as some argued, it was a secret Catholic plot of some kind. Eastern Orthodox rejected it for a more administrative reason: they argued the Pope does not have the authority to change the calendar, only an Ecumenical Council can do that. The problem is that because of the Great Schism of 1054, there hasn’t been a (nearly) universally recognized ecumenical council since 787, and trying to hold one today is a nightmare considering the still-ongoing dispute over Papal authority between the Orthodox and Catholics (not to mention the growing schism between the Church in Constantinople and other Orthodox).

Over time, the Protestant countries adopted a calendar that is identical to the Gregorian Calendar but not called that to avoid giving the Catholics credit (such as Great Britain adopting their “New Style” calendar in 1752). But Eastern Orthodox remain firm that only a Council can reform the Church calendar, even though most Orthodox countries have adopted the Gregorian calendar as their civil calendar.

While a few are adamant that the Julian Calendar has religious significance and is favored by God (and there is some interesting evidence for that I won’t go in to here involving dates on which miraculous events have occurred), most Orthodox would agree the Church calendar needs reform. There’s just no way to “legally” do it under Canon Law without a Council, and we can’t organize a council due to divisions in the Church, so we’re stuck.

Thus today the Orthodox Churches such as the Greek, Russian, Antiochian, and so forth continue to use the Julian Calendar for the Paschal cycle, which is now 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar. Some years, like last year, the date of Easter and Pascha (as Orthodox call the Feast of the Resurrection) are the same, but typically Pascha is later than Easter, sometimes over a month. This year (2026) Pascha is next week, the 12th of April on the Gregorian Calendar.

No matter which calendar you are on or which religion you adhere- even if none at all, I hope this spring brings you a renewal of spirit and hope for the future.