When is Easter 2024, Ash Wednesday, and answers to other FAQs about the Lenten season

The Christian celebration of Easter is a movable feast that is observed on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. However, Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter, which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, on a Sunday between April 4 and May 8.

Here is a brief summary of when Easter and related events take place in 2024, and what those days mean to observants.

When is Easter 2024?

In 2024 Easter is on Sunday March 31.

Eastern Orthodox Christians will celebrate the holy day on Sunday May 5.

How is the date of Easter determined?

In the year 325, the Council of Nicaea ordered a confusing situation of varying dates in different places by decreeing Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the Spring Equinox. If that full moon falls on a Sunday, then Easter is the following Sunday. The council's decree eventually became the standard.

The moon is important in calculating Easter dates because the Christian holy day is closely connected to the Jewish feast of Passover, which is determined by a lunar cycle.

For the sake of Easter date calculations, the Christian church assumes March 21 as the date of the equinox, even though the literal astronomical equinox can fall on a slightly different date.

Western Christians follow the Gregorian calendar, instituted by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582.

Because the Gregorian calendar introduced leap days that can complicate tracking lunar cycles, the "full moon" referenced in the Easter formula is now a point in the Metonic cycle, not the literal astronomical full moon.

Eastern Orthodox Christians follow the earlier Julian calendar in dating religious events, hence their different date for Easter.

When is Ash Wednesday 2024?

Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, takes place 46 days before Easter. Ash Wednesday in 2024 is Feb. 14. Yes, that is also Valentine's Day.

What is Ash Wednesday?

Ash Wednesday is traditionally a day of prayer and fasting (and for some, abstinence from meat) to initiate the Lenten period of repentance and preparation. Catholics and some Protestants receive ashes on their foreheads in the pattern of a cross as a reminder of their mortality. The ashes are created by burning palms from the previous year's Palm Sunday. In recent years, some congregations have offered "ashes to go" on streetcorners and in other public environments. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Milwaukee priests sprinkled a pinch of ashes over the heads of recipients as public health and safety measure.

When is Lent in 2024?

In 2024 Lent takes place from Feb. 14 through March 28 (which is Holy Thursday).

Some denominations observe Lent through Holy Saturday, which would be March 30.

What is Lent?

"Lent is a 40 day season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving that begins on Ash Wednesday and ends at sundown on Holy Thursday," according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"The forty-day length of Lent is rooted in the biblical usage of the number forty. Forty is typically indicative of a time of testing, trial, penance, purification, and renewal," according to the USCCB. Church leaders connect this length of time to the 40-day period that Jesus fasted in the desert.

For many people, Lent is associated with giving up some luxury, like chocolate, as a sacrificial form of penance and self-discipline. Other people attempt to refrain from character defects such as gossiping.

For people who have felt discouraged about failing their Lenten attempts to give something up, the popular priest and writer Fr. James Martin suggests another approach. "This Lent maybe you could pray not simply for the willingness to give up chocolate, but to become a more loving person, day by day, in your own way," he wrote in the Jesuit magazine America.

When is Easter in 2025?

Easter will be April 20, 2025 for both western and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: When is Easter 2024, Ash Wednesday, and answers to other Lenten FAQs