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Do you believe in miracles, math?

By G.D.

By G.D. Maxwell

Easter, ostensibly the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, is the Rubik’s Cube of holidays and as such, has always been the holiday I most associate with celebrating my own state of normalcy, to wit: the State of Confusion.

Easter is often referred to as a movable feast. Movable because the holiday can fall any time between March 22 nd and April 25 th . Feast because, well, I’m not sure why but having stuffed my youthful face with chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chickens and accidental cellophane grass – an unwanted byproduct of speed and gluttony – often enough to wish I’d been born an atheist, I’ll just go with the flow on the feast thing.

Along with my cynical disbelief in all things miraculous, it was this ethereal quality of Easter that led me to conclude religion and I would follow two different life paths. I reckoned if the death and resurrection of Jesus were the touchstone events of Christianity and the most learned Keepers of the Faith couldn’t nail down – no pun intended – the date of that miracle any closer than within a month, who was zooming who, so to speak?

But in my quest to study all things trivial, I learned the whole Easter thing was religious-political compromise, a melding of cultures and, best of all, a really cool astronomical-mathematical puzzle. It wasn’t enough to bring me back into the fold but trotting out the Formula For Determining Easter was definitely a great party trick.

Like most religious holidays, Easter has pagan roots modern churches take great pains to dye with the colouring of piety. And like most pagan holidays, it has more than a passing relation to fertility, which is to say, messin’ around. Not coincidentally, like Christmas, it also has to do with the astronomical changing of the seasons, this time the vernal equinox.

I won’t bore you with the Jewish roots of Passover and the morphing bridge between Passover and Easter but trust me, we’re all a lot closer than the various Holy Wars littering history would have us believe.

But Easter is the climax of Lent which is so complicated and drawn out and wrought with guilt I can’t bring myself to discuss it, but I still eat pancakes to kick it off.

Of all cultures for whom Easter is truly the best time of year, it’s the Mexicans who seem to do it right. While figures are sketchy, it is currently estimated that approximately half of Mexico celebrate Semana Santa , the week between Domingo de Ramos and Domingo de Gloria by humbly skiing in Whistler. Welcome, amigos!

While Whistleratics share few of your celebrations leading up to Easter, we do celebrate our own version of Los Judas later in the season. The burning of Los Judas – Judas Iscariot – takes place after mass on Holy Saturday, the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. A large papier maché effigy of Judas, the devil and, not infrequently, unpopular politicos, is set alight amid much good humour and celebration to symbolize the triumph of good over evil.

In Whistler, we have our own celebration, burning the effigy of Los Touristos near the end of the season. The celebratory mood is much the same; but I digress.

Getting back to the date of Easter, the First Council of Nicaea, called in 325A.D. by that buttinski Constantine, established the date of Easter. Being what you might call long-term planners, the Council wanted to establish a formula for determining the exact date of Easter until the End of Time. It didn’t help that they were using the Julian calendar but it’s not like they could foresee Pope Gregory and his obsession with Leap Year.

They developed tables that make sine, cosine and tangent tables look like a walk in the park. So complicated was it that, like the i-before-e-except-after-c rule, they simplified it to three rules:

• Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox;

• this particular ecclesiastical full moon is the 14 th day of a tabular lunation (new moon); and

• the vernal equinox is fixed as March 21.

Easy, right? Except there are differences between ecclesiastical full moons and astronomical full moons, the vernal equinox isn’t always March 21 st , and then those pesky time zones came into existence.

Be that as it may, here’s the algorithm for computing the date of Easter. Use it if you ever hit on a math major in a bar. The algorithm uses the year, y , to give the month, m , and day, d , of Easter. The symbol * means multiply. And, it is an integer calculation; all variables are integers and all remainders from division are dropped.

c = y / 100

n = y - 19 * ( y / 19 )

k = ( c - 17 ) / 25

i = c - c / 4 - ( c - k ) / 3 + 19 * n + 15

i = i - 30 * ( i / 30 )

i = i - ( i / 28 ) * ( 1 - ( i / 28 ) * ( 29 / ( i + 1 ) )

* ( ( 21 - n ) / 11 ) )

j = y + y / 4 + i + 2 - c + c / 4

j = j - 7 * ( j / 7 )

l = i - j

m = 3 + ( l + 40 ) / 44

d = l + 28 - 31 * ( m / 4 )

For example, using, oh, say the year 2010, y=2010, c=2010/100=20, n=2010 - 19 x (2010/19) = 15

Hence, Easter in 2010 will fall on April 4 th , which is after the Olympics in Whistler so who cares? Math is hard.

But this brings us to the Burning Question to ponder this Easter. What would Jesus ride?

Would Jesus throw it down with snowboarders? Ride goofy? Would Jesus the Shredder go with hard boots and a carving board or be a powder pig and float through the fluffy stuff?

I believe Jesus would probably ski. My ecclesiastical guidance for this conclusion is that Jesus was a firm believer in turning the other cheek and judging by all the blindside collisions between snowboarders and, well, everybody else on the mountain, you can’t turn the other cheek if you’re riding a board.

I think Jesus might be favourably predisposed to backcountry gear since it is irrefutably true that God lives in the backcountry but an equally strong case could be made that Jesus sticks to the groomers and, being a humble man, still rides straight boards. After all, he was fond of followers and Lord knows there are many pilgrims on groomed runs sorely in need of guidance.

Happy Easter. Let us après.