Countdown to
Easter
The moveable feast of spring
Today is Easter.
146 days until Easter, on Sunday, March 28, 2027.
Easter is Sunday, March 28, 2027. Happens Easter Sunday (which moves each year).
Easter is the central feast of the Christian year, commemorating the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after his crucifixion. Unlike Christmas, it has no fixed date: it drifts through late March and April, governed by the moon rather than the calendar. That movement is exactly why a countdown helps — Easter rarely lands where you expect it.
A feast set by the moon
From the earliest centuries, Christians disagreed about when to celebrate the resurrection. The Council of Nicaea in 325 sought a common date, tying Easter to the lunar cycle: it falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. The medieval calculation used to pin down that Sunday, known as the computus, was one of the era’s thornier mathematical puzzles.
The holiday’s roots run through Passover. Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Jewish festival, and most languages still call the day a version of Pascha, from the Hebrew Pesach. The English name is the outlier: the 8th-century monk Bede traced “Easter” to Eostre, a goddess associated with spring. Symbols of renewal — eggs, hares, new growth — attached themselves to the celebration over the following centuries.
How Easter is observed
For Christians, Easter is the climax of Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday and passes through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. It ends the 40 days of fasting and reflection known as Lent, and many congregations greet Easter morning with dawn “sunrise” services.
Around the religious observance sits a large secular tradition. Children hunt for hidden eggs and wake to baskets of chocolate; families dye and decorate eggs, from simple dip-dyed shells to the intricate wax-resist pysanky of Ukraine. Bakeries sell hot cross buns, and tables are set with lamb or ham. In much of Europe and beyond, Easter Monday is a public holiday that extends the weekend.
Eastern Orthodox churches follow the same lunar logic but calculate it on the older Julian calendar, so Orthodox Pascha usually arrives one to five weeks after Western Easter — a reminder that even a holiday this widely observed is still counted in more than one way.
🐣 Fun facts about Easter
- The latest Easter can fall is April 25, and it rarely reaches that edge: the date last landed on April 25 in 1943 and will not return there until 2038.
- The Easter Bunny traces back to the 'Osterhase,' an egg-laying hare in German Lutheran folklore that German immigrants carried to Pennsylvania in the 1700s.
- The White House Easter Egg Roll has been held on the South Lawn since 1878, when President Rutherford B. Hayes first opened the grounds to children.
- The Pennsylvania company Just Born produces roughly two billion marshmallow Peeps a year, making them America's best-selling non-chocolate Easter candy.
- After Halloween, Easter is the second-biggest candy-selling holiday in the United States.
Upcoming Easter dates
| Date | Days away |
|---|---|
| 146 days | |
| 531 days | |
| 881 days | |
| 1,266 days | |
| 1,623 days |
How people mark Easter
- Easter egg hunts
- Dyeing and decorating eggs
- Dawn sunrise church services
- Baskets of chocolate eggs and bunnies
- Hot cross buns and family feasts
- Easter parades and new spring clothes
Frequently asked
What day is Easter?
Easter Sunday is a moveable feast: it falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the March 21 equinox, so the date shifts each year between March 22 and April 25.
Why does Easter's date change every year?
Because it is tied to the lunar cycle rather than a fixed calendar date. The convention traces to the Council of Nicaea in 325, which called for a single Sunday date linked to the first spring full moon. Anchored to the moon, Easter drifts across late March and April.
Why do Orthodox Christians celebrate Easter on a different day?
Eastern Orthodox churches calculate the date using the older Julian calendar, so their Pascha usually falls one to five weeks after Western Easter. The two occasionally coincide, as they did in 2025.
What is Holy Week?
Holy Week is the week leading up to Easter, running from Palm Sunday through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday (marking the crucifixion), and Holy Saturday. It is the culmination of Lent, the 40-day period of fasting and reflection that precedes Easter Sunday.