Home Calendar Movable feasts

Movable feasts

The movable feasts.

Most of the Christian calendar is anchored to the date of Easter. Because Easter itself moves from year to year, every observance computed from it moves with it. This page explains how that calculation works and lists the observances derived from it.

What a movable feast is

A movable feast is an observance whose date varies from year to year because it is calculated from another anchor date, most often Easter Sunday. Fixed-date feasts (Christmas on December 25, Epiphany on January 6, the saints’ days) fall on the same day every year. Movable feasts do not.

Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, and a handful of other Western observances are all movable. They move together because they are all derived from the same anchor.

How Easter is calculated

Easter is the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, which is the first ecclesiastical full moon on or after March 21 (the ecclesiastical equinox). The Council of Nicaea fixed this rule in 325 AD; the algorithm that implements it is called the Computus.

The Western church uses the Gregorian Computus, which works with the Gregorian calendar. The Eastern Orthodox church uses the original (Julian) Computus, which still calculates against the Julian calendar; the resulting date is then converted to the Gregorian date a reader sees on a wall calendar. The two calculations sometimes coincide and sometimes differ by a week or more.

For practical reference, Easter cannot fall earlier than March 22 or later than April 25 in the Gregorian calendar. Orthodox Pascha cannot fall earlier than April 4 or later than May 8.

The movable observances derived from Easter

Each observance below is calculated by an offset from Easter Sunday (or from Orthodox Pascha for Orthodox-specific entries). The date changes each year; the offset does not.

  • Baptism of the Lord Feast Sunday after Epiphany
  • Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) Seasonal Easter − 47 days
  • Ash Wednesday Fast Easter − 46 days
  • First Sunday of Lent Seasonal Easter − 42 days
  • Palm Sunday Feast Easter − 7 days
  • Maundy Thursday Feast Easter − 3 days
  • Good Friday Fast Easter − 2 days
  • Holy Saturday Fast Easter − 1 days
  • Easter Sunday Feast Easter + 0 days
  • Divine Mercy Sunday Feast Easter + 7 days
  • Ascension Feast Easter + 39 days
  • Pentecost Feast Easter + 49 days
  • Trinity Sunday Feast Easter + 56 days
  • Corpus Christi Feast Easter + 60 days
  • Sacred Heart of Jesus Feast Easter + 68 days
  • Pascha (Orthodox Easter) Feast Orthodox Pascha + 0 days
  • Pentecost (Orthodox) Feast Orthodox Pascha + 49 days
  • Christ the King Feast Sunday before Advent
  • First Sunday of Advent Seasonal First Sunday of Advent (anchor)
  • World Communion Sunday Seasonal 1st Sunday of October
  • Thanksgiving Day (US) Seasonal 4th Thursday of November

See the dates these resolve to in the main calendar or in a specific year permalink like 2027.

Last updated: May 17, 2026