Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday celebrates the joy of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The choir and congregation exult:

Christ is risen from the dead!  He trampled down death by death and by His Resurrection He granted life unto us.  Glory unto Him for all ages.  Amen.

The faithful exchange the Easter greeting: Krisdos haryav ee merelotz. Orhnyal eh harootiunun Krisdosee.

The faithful share a joyous Easter feast, often including lamb and coloured eggs (symbols of new life) and Easter bread (cheoreg). Because the use of eggs was forbidden during Lent, they were brought to the table on Easter Day, coloured red to symbolize the Easter joy. This custom is found in the Latin and Oriental Churches. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring.

Easter is the greatest festival in the Christian Church. In the beginning, Christians of Jewish origin commemorated Easter immediately after Passover, which occurs on the evening of a full moon and corresponds to a fixed date according to the Jewish (lunar) calendar.

In 325 A.D., the Council of Nicaea decided that Easter should be commemorated on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21st, which was the date of the vernal equinox in that year.

The Armenian Apostolic Church began using the Gregorian calendar in 1923 to calculate feast dates, making it one of the first Eastern Churches to adopt it. The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem is the lone exception, still adhering to the Julian calendar because of concerns relating to the established system of sharing rights over key Holy Land shrines.

While virtually all secular institutions today are using the Gregorian calendar, some Eastern Orthodox Churches (including the Russian Orthodox) have not accepted it and are using the Julian calendar to calculate the dates of Easter and all their feasts.