Why Does Passover "Skip" Over Easter?

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There are two misconceptions in the question, which it's necessary to address in order to answer it.

Passover is a Jewish festival, and celebrates the deliverance of the Israelites from the last of the great plagues of Egypt, when the Egyptians' first-born were killed. In order to identify their homes to be spared by the Spirit of the Lord, the Israelites daubed the blood of a sacrificed lamb on the doorposts. The Lord then passed over that house. See Exodus chapters 11–12.

The festivals of Holy Week and Easter commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus. He was crucified at the time of the passover festival that year, when the Jewish people were remembering their ancestors' deliverance from the plagues and ultimately from slavery in Egypt. Because the Christian calendar makes it an annual commemoration as well, it's always going to fall at around the time of the Jewish passover. There is no other direct calendrical connection. [In fact, the calculation of the date of Easter is complicated, but not necessary for this answer.]

The name "Passover" has nothing to do with passing over Easter. If Christ had not been crucified at Passover, there would be no connection at all.

Because the date of Passover varies in the Gregorian calendar (the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar, not a solar calendar), and the date of Easter also varies because it derived from the Passover calculation and is essentially calculated from the moon, albeit slightly differently, the two festivals coincide occasionally. They don't coincide every year at all. This year, as Matt Gutting has commented, Passover, the Western Easter and the Eastern Easter all coincide despite their different methods of calculation.


There are theological connections between the Jewish Passover, where a lamb was killed to deliver the Israelites from bondage, and the Christian Easter, where Christ [often called the Paschal or Passover Lamb] was killed to deliver his people from the consequences of sin. But while the correlation is evidence of God's plan in the timing of the crucifixion, I'm not sure that it's required for this question.

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