What Date Is Easter In 2014 And When Are This Year's Easter Holidays?

What date is Easter in 2014 and when are this year’s Easter holidays in Coventry and Warwickshire?

You've probably seen the chocolate eggs on the supermarket shelves for months - but what date is Easter in 2014 and when are the school holidays in Coventry and Warwickshire?

NewsDavid Bentley15:27, 26 Mar 2014Updated 11:18, 28 Mar 2014

You've probably seen the chocolate eggs on the supermarket shelves for months.

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Not long after the last of the Christmas goods have been removed, the Easter products start to appear.

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The gap between festivities seems shorter every year, making it seem like Easter is getting earlier and earlier.

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But what date is Easter in 2014? Why does the date change each year and who decides when it will be?

How is Easter worked out?

The 2014 Easter dates are as follows: Good Friday is on April 18, Easter Day or Easter Sunday on April 20 and Easter Monday on April 21.

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Easter is called a ‘moveable feast’ - which means a Christian festival that occurs on different dates in different years.

The date when we celebrate Easter is all down to the First Council of Nicea, a council of Christian bishops convened by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in 325AD. Nicea was on the site of the modern-day town of Iznik in Turkey.

The purpose of the gathering was to make a decision on several Christian topics, including the date of Easter.

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The bishops agreed that Easter Day (also called Easter Sunday, the anniversary of Christ’s Resurrection) would fall on the first Sunday following the paschal full moon. That means the next full moon after the spring equinox.

It was decided Easter must always occur on a Sunday, because that was the day of Christ’s Resurrection.

And the reason for choosing the paschal full moon is that it’s the date of Passover in the Jewish calendar, and the Last Supper (Holy Thursday) occurred on the Passover. Therefore, Easter is the Sunday after Passover.

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That all sounds fairly straightforward, except that the events chosen to fix the date of Easter - paschal full moon and the spring equinox - are themselves not on a fixed date each year.

To solve that headache, the Church decided that the full moon is always determined to be the 14th day of the lunar month and the spring equinox would be taken as March 21 - even though it can occur on March 20, as it did in 2014.

Easter is also the time of school holidays. So when are the children off from school in Coventry and Warwickshire?

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For schools in the Coventry City Council local authority area, the Easter holiday is from Saturday, April 12, until Sunday, April 27. That means the kids finish school on Friday, April 11, and go back on Monday, April 28, for the start of summer term.

For schools in the Warwickshire County Council local authority area, the same dates apply. That means children in Warwickshire finish school for the Easter break on Friday, April 11, and return on Monday, April 28.

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