Eastertide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eastertide is the archaic English term for what is now called the Easter Season. Eastertide began on Easter Sunday and continued until Pentecost in the Christian liturgical calendar, thus spanning a total of seven weeks. Some denominations — most notably the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican churches — formerly included the succeeding two weeks as well. The first eight days of the Eastertide are commonly referred to as the Octave of Easter.
Until 1970, the Roman Catholic calendar labelled the Sundays following Easter Sunday as "Sundays After Easter," the first such Sunday traditionally being called Low Sunday (although now it is more commonly known as Divine Mercy Sunday), the next Sunday the "Second Sunday After Easter", the Sunday after that the "Third Sunday After Easter", and so on. The fifth Sunday after Easter was sometimes called Rogation Sunday, or "the Sunday before the Rogation days". On the Thursday after the aforementioned Sunday, forty days after Easter Sunday, is the feast of the Ascension, and the Sunday falling three days after this was known as the "Sunday After Ascension" (formerly "Sunday with the Octave of the Ascension") and less commonly as the "Sixth Sunday After Easter." Pentecost is the next Sunday, followed by Trinity Sunday, and four days after the latter, the feast of Corpus Christi, which in many places can be celebrated on the following Sunday. The calendar week (Sunday through Saturday) beginning on Trinity Sunday was deemed the last week of the Easter season, which thus encompassed nine weeks. (Check this, because the pre-Vatican II calendar had Paschal time as ending on the Saturday after Pentecost.)
This holiday is apparently based upon the Jewish festival of "Shavuot" (Weeks on Hebrew) and the counting of the "Omer". This begins immediately after the start of Passover. Each day is counted and after 7 weeks have past (49 days) the important holiday of Shavuot is celebrated on the 50th day. This was one of the three major Jewish holidays in which a pilgrimage was made to the temole in Jerusalem, were sacrifices were made. Early (Jewish) Christians apparently included this ritual in Christianity, hence the counting of 49+1 day from Easter, which was originally celebrated according to the Jewish date for Passover - 14th of Nissan
