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Show Christian church explains dates in connection with Easter time You can look to the sky instead in-stead of your calendar to find the date of Easter. The moon is the key to determining the date of Easter, which can come as early as March 22 or as late as April 25. Not just any full moon, of course, but the first one after the vernal equinox which occurs oc-curs about March 21. Easter then falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox, according ac-cording to New Standard Encyclopedia. En-cyclopedia. This year Easter is scheduled for April 18. Other confusing dates, such as Ash Wednesday, can also be figured out easily. Ash Wednesday, Wed-nesday, March 3rd this year, comes 40 days before Easter, excluding Sundays. It is the beginning of Lent and of the Easter season. In the early church,, ashes were sprinkled on the heads of persons who repented their sins entirely worldly, may be traced to an old belief that it was unlucky not to wear some new article of clothing or personal adornment on Easter. Or it may stem from the universal feeling that the Eastertide is the time of casting off the old and the beginning of the new. And those families who, by custom, eat ham on Easter Sunday are unwittingly following follow-ing an old practice of the Roman Ro-man Catholics of England who ate a gammon of bacon on Easter to show their contempt for the Jews, to whom pork is forbidden. Commercial League Team W L Quality Cleaners 41 15 Silver Dollar 32 24 Am. Linen 30 26 Carrolls Motel 27 29 Dot and Martys 19 37 Sport Shop 18 38 Ind. high series: Carl Wiley, Quality Cleaners, 587; Jim Wiley, Wil-ey, Quality Cleaners, 543; Bob Kinross, Quality Cleaners, 543. High team game: Quality Cleaners, 935; Dot and Martys, 853; Quality Cleaners, 840. Ind. high game: Jim Wiley, Quality Cleaners, 222; Marty Perrero, Dot and Martys, 221; Frank Van Patten, Carrolls Motel, 201. on Ash Wednesday. The ashes r-were r-were obtained from the burning burn-ing of palms consecrated on Palm Sunday of the previous year and were to remind the faithful that "man is but dust." In the Christian Church, Lent is the period of penitence, prayer and fasting in preparation prepara-tion for Easter. The Lenten season extends from Ash Wednesday Wed-nesday until Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, and commemorates Jesus Christ's 40 days of fasting and prayer in the desert. During Lent, which comes from an old English Eng-lish word for spring, Christians are required or encouraged to fast, avoid amusements, and engage in special worship. Holy Week in the Christian church is the week preceding Easter and is observed as a period of devotion to the last days of Jesus Christ and to his death on the cross. Holy i Week, the most important of the Christian year, begins with . Palm Sunday which commem- orates the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. Maundy or Holy Thursday is the an- ' niversary of the Last Supper, : and Good Friday recalls the i Crucifixion. Holy Saturday is . the day before Easter and the i end of Lent. Easter is the festival cele-l cele-l brating the Resurrection of i Jesus Christ. It symbolizes the I keystone of Christian faith and hope the immortality of man. The crucifixion of Jesus occurred oc-curred during the Jewish Passover. The early Christians, being Jewish, observed Easter as part of Passover. Later, as non-Jews came into the church, some Christians insisted that Easter should be celebrated on Sunday, the day of (Resurrection. (Resurrec-tion. Western churches generally gener-ally celebrated the festival on Sunday, while eastern churches followed the Jewish tradition. New Standard Encyclopedia points out that the first ecumenical ecu-menical council, the Council of Nicaea, in 325 decided that Easter should always be on Sunday, and adopted the rule for establishing the date. Easter derived is name from Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess god-dess of spring. And many of the customs of the Easter festival fes-tival were incorporated from heathen rituals welc o m i n g the spring season. The egg has long been a symbol of Easter. But long before the birth of Christ the ancient Egyptians and Persians had the custom of coloring and eating eggs during their spring festival as a symbol of fertility and of renewed life. The Christians paraphrased this ancient significance sig-nificance of the egg as a symbol sym-bol of new life, and the egg became a symbol of resurrection. resurrec-tion. The sunrise service so much a part of Easter is also rooted in antiquity. According to an old superstition, the sun rising on Easter morning danced in the heavens. This belief has been traced to the old heathen festival when the spectators danced in honor of the sun. The Easter Parade, seeming |