Greek Orthodox folks: how do you navigate celebrating Easter at a different date in the US?
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Anonymous
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I’m a Catholic married to a Greek (Orthodox) and we have tween kids. I’m not a very practicing Catholic so I was fine with getting married in the Orthodox Church ( without having the need to convert) and agreed at DH’s request to have the kids baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church.
Greek Orthodox communities celebrate Easter at a different date though. While everyone is celebrating Easter today, the Orthodox congregations are celebrating Palm Sunday, as their Easter is next week. Next year, the Greek Orthodox Easter is in May while everyone else will celebrate Easter in March. We have explained these differences to the kids and the reasons behind them. I never thought this would be as much of an issue but clearly our kids now feel awkward that we celebrate at a different time. My 11 year old was even asking yesterday “ Can’t we just go to mommy’s church and celebrate Easter like everyone else ?” I’m not questioning any of the theological differences between the 2 churches. I honestly feel the timing of the Orthodox Easter which always falls after Passover is more correct. This is more of a practical issue. For the Greek Orthodox on this forum, how do you navigate this ? |
Anonymous
| It's called get over it. |
Anonymous
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Navigate it?
I put the church address in Google Maps. |
Anonymous
I celebrate with the Catholics 
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Anonymous
| Celebrate both ? |
Anonymous
| We celebrate both. |
Anonymous
| It’s the same celebration! Why not just do both? |
Anonymous
It’s not that simple. Today is the Greek Orthodox Palm Sunday and the Catholic Easter. You have to choose one to celebrate |
Anonymous
Then go to both services. You can to Catholic Palm Sunday, then 2 Sunday services on the Palm Sunday/Easter Day, then just the Orthodox Easter next week. It might not be the easiest but mixing faiths was never going to be easy. |
Anonymous
| I grew up in a Catholic and Greek Orthodox family - we did both for the most part, and maybe not every year, but we definitely celebrated Catholic Easter every year and then I think many years we went to church on Greek Orthodox Easter and got a dyed egg and the candied almonds (my favorite part as a kid lol). |
Anonymous
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We do Easter baskets on western Easter and the religious services on Pascha. That’s how we did it growing up and I continue it to this day with my kids.
Don’t you have the same issue at Christmas? Orthodox Christmas is later than western Christmas. |
Anonymous
Yes- we do the eggs on Pascha but not western Easter. Did you also do the egg tapping games? That was my favorite part growing up. |
Anonymous
That's why I'm wondering if this is an AI bot designed to make up posts. If the kids are as old as OP claims, they would have run into this problem already for years. |
Anonymous
😂😂😂 |
Anonymous
And why is the Easter date different every year? Because it's based on the lunar calendar, as I learned in 8th grade science class, in a public school from a science teacher who was Roman Catholic, as were many of his students. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the vernal equinox. It seemed odd, when I learned it, that a religious holiday was based on astronomy. Later, I learned that Christmas - the birth of Christ - was also placed on the lunar calendar, based on an already celebrated Pagan holiday, that we later figured out was based on the winter Solstice. Christmas is a few days after the winter solstice (dec 22) when it became clear that the world wasn't going to get darker and colder - which it had, up until Dec 22. It still got cold, but it became obvious that the days were lengthening. So ancient Christians decided that we might as well celebrate the birth of the Savior on an already celebrated holiday! It wasn't until much later that we scientifically figured out astronomy. |