Today in New Zealand is the second observance of the new public holiday for Matariki. This is cool for a number of reasons:

1) It celebrates the new year as traditionally observed by Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand

2) The legislation introducing it was bilingual in English and Te Reo Maori. (Although Te Reo is an official language of NZ, along with English and NZ Sign Language, it's not common for legislation to be bilingual)

3) Matariki is tied to a lunar calendar, which makes it a movable feast on the solar/Gregorian calendar. Like Easter it has an astronomical definition (the first rising of Matariki [Pleiades] above the horizon in the last quarter of the moon in the first month of the lunar year) but for convenience there are published tables of dates, which recall medieval computus tables.

#Matariki #NewZealand #Computus #LunarCalendar #Pleiades

Today is Easter in the Western Christian Church. It's Easter next Sunday, 16th April in the Orthodox churches.

But that's nothing in comparison with 7th century Ireland, where there might be 3 different dates for Easter on the island.

A post on the Irish contribution to the calculation of Easter, computus:

https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2018/04/01/irish-computus/

#computus #easter #casca #IrishPhilosophyOTD

Feast of St #Willibrord (658-739). From Northumbria, he studied from age 20 to 32 in the Abbey of Ráíth/Cluain Melsigi (Clonmelsh in Carlow). There he learned the Dionysian method of calculating Easter #computus from Ecgberht, bringing it in turn to the Franks, along with the BC/AD date system. Irish books on computus followed, as the Franks sought answers to questions already answered in Ireland.

More on the Irish and computus here: https://www.irishphilosophy.com/2018/04/01/irish-computus/

#IrishPhilosophyOTD