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Tikhon, was quickly rescinded. Because of this disagreement, it was decided
that all Orthodox Churches would keep Easter together, according to the old
Julian Calendar. So all Orthodox Churches (except the Orthodox Church of
Finland) follow the old calendar for Easter, which explains the discrepancy over
the date of Easter between the Orthodox and the West—our Easters can
coincide (as next year), or Orthodox Easter can be a week later (more often
than not), four weeks later (rarely) or five weeks later (as this year). The
differences occur because the spring equinox is still regarded as 20/21 March,
even though this corresponds to 2/3 April on the Gregorian Calendar. If the
paschal full moon, predicted according a table involving Golden Numbers for
each year (as in the tables after the Calendar in the Book of Common Prayer), falls
between 21 March and 2 April, it can’t count for the Orthodox calculation and
we have to wait until the next one. Only certain Churches, mostly those
associated with the Œcumenical Patriarchate, accepted the Revised Julian
Calendar; in the end, Russia didn’t, nor did Serbia, Bulgaria, the Patriarchate of
Jerusalem, or the monastic communities on Mount Athos. So far as Christmas
is concerned, those Churches that observe the Revised Julian Calendar keep
Christmas on the same day as the West; those that stick to the Old Julian
Calendar keep it 13 days later—for them 25 December, but according to the
civil calendar 7 January.
From time to time, it has been suggested that a solution might be to
keep Easter according to an astronomical calculation: the first Sunday after the
full moon after the Spring Equinox, calculated according to some agreed place,
most probably Jerusalem. That is the date the ways of computing Easter are
trying to arrive at (not completely successfully with either the Gregorian or the
Julian calendar, though the Gregorian is much more successful). This
suggestion was originally on the agenda for the Great and Holy Synod held in
Crete this summer. In the event, other matters took precedence and there was
no discussion of the date of Easter. Such a decision, however, could provide a
means towards Orthodox and the West, at least the Catholic West, agreeing on
a common date for Easter. But it seems difficult to conceive how we would ever
get to this point. Such a suggestion is quite different from yet another

7 See Vladimir Khulap, ‘Pastoral Problems of a Reform of the Liturgical Calendar in Russia’, St
Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 60 (2016), nos. 1–2 (an issue devoted to the question of the [then]
approaching Council of the Orthodox Church, eventually held in Crete), 65–77, at 69–70; an article
which makes clear that, though there is much resistance to the idea of changing to the New Julian
Calendar, it is not inconceivable: see the statement by Metropolitan Hilarion quoted art. cit. 74.

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