The Eastern Orthodox Church, separated from their Roman counterparts for over 500 years at this point, refused to adopt this new system of dating, be it for liturgical or civil use. It was hundreds of years before countries like Greece and Russia finally accepted the Gregorian system for governmental purposes. Even then most Orthodox religions refused to use the Gregorian calendar, instead adopting a Revised Julian Calendar.
The Revised Julian calendar, proposed at an Orthodox synod in Constantinople in 1923, differs from the Gregorian only in the method of determining leap years. This means that the Revised Julian Calendar and the Gregorian calendar will have identical feast days until the year 2800. This means that holidays like Christmas would fall on the same day in these two systems.
But Easter still doesn’t sync up. Why?
Most of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, for unknown (though most likely tradition-oriented) reasons refused to follow the rule as it applied to Easter. They continued to use the Julian calendar to calculate Easter, and Easter alone. So while almost every Orthodox Church had the same holiday dates as Roman Catholics and Protestants, Easter is still observed in the old Julian tradition.
1 Comment
It is very informative because I have always raised the question why these two Easter and on different days, and I do not remember what those days will ever match!