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Two Easters And Passover: Which Is When?

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In 2012, Easter will be celebrated on April 8th by Western churches and on April 15th by Orthodox churches. In 2011, both were celebrated on the same day, April 24th. In 2013, Western Christian Easter will be celebrated on March 31st and Orthodox Easter will be on May 5th. The holiday of Pesach, or Passover, falls on the Hebrew calendar dates of Nissan 15-22 or the secular dates of April 6th – 14th in 2012 and March 25th – April 2nd in 2013.

How Do You Know The Dates For The Holidays?

The easiest way to figure out the dates for Easter and Passover is to look them up – unless, of course, you are a trained astronomer or someone else whose been taught how to calculate the moveable dates.

Growing up, I was always caught in a holiday vacation snare.  I went to a Greek elementary school. Vacation was Holy Week and Easter Week for Greek (Eastern Orthodox) Easter.  My neighborhood friends, most of whom went to Catholic school, had off Holy Week and Easter Week for Western Christian Easter.  My birthday, at the end of March, usually fell during someone’s vacation – but since my friends and I had different ones – my birthday celebration was shared only with the kids that were around.  That really used to annoy me.

As a child I remember being taught that Orthodox Easter was based on the lunar calendar – like Passover – and that Christian Easter was not.  This was neither a very good nor an accurate explanation.

So finally, many years later, I decided to look it up – and I’m sharing the explanation with you.

The Formula For The Holiday Date Calculation

Both Western and Orthodox churches use the same formula to calculate the date for Easter:  the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. The problem is that they base the dates on different calendars: Western churches use the Gregorian calendar, the standard calendar used in most of the world. Orthodox churches use the older Julian calendar.

Along with the two different calendar systems there’s a factoring in of ecclesiastical moons and paschal full moons, the astronomical equinox, and the fixed equinox.

The Dates

The Christian churches that follow the Gregorian calendar celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the paschal full moon on or just after the vernal equinox, March 21. The paschal full Moon is always on the 14th day of a lunar month.

Eastern Orthodox churches follow the Julian calendar. Because of different methods of calculation, the Eastern Orthodox and Western Christian churches frequently celebrate Easter on different days.

In Western Christian churches Easter cannot be before March 22nd or after April 25th. In Eastern churches, using Gregorian calendar dates, Easter can occur between April 4th and May 8th.

Passover Dates In Relationship To Easter

The Eastern Orthodox Church applies the calendar formula so that Easter always falls after Passover believing that the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ took place after he entered Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. Easter sometimes precedes Passover by weeks in the Western Church.

 

Jelly Beans: What Kind Is Your Favorite?

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Don’t you love those little nuggets of jelly bean sweetness that come in multitudes of colors and flavors and get stuck in your teeth?

Their gummy insides probably stretch back centuries ago from the treat, Turkish Delight.  Their outsides are just like the colored hard candy coating, developed in the late 17th century, for the Jordan almond.

The modern jelly bean became popular during the American Civil War when Boston’s William Schraft encouraged sending candy to Union soldiers.  Jellybeans were the first bulk candy and they became one of the staples of penny candy that was sold by weight in the early 1900s. Because of their egg shape, which can be taken as representing fertility and birth, they became popular as Easter candy around 1930.

Standard jelly beans come in fruit flavors but there are now a huge number of flavors — some goofy, some sophisticated — like spiced, mint, gourmet, tropical, popcorn, bubble gum, pepper, and cola.  They also come in a sugar free version (seems weird, but true – don’t you wonder how many chemicals are in those). Whatever your flavor preference, Americans eat a whole lot of them – around 16 billion at Easter enough to circle the globe nearly three times if all of the Easter jellybeans were lined up end to end.

How Do You Eat Them And What’s Your Flavor?

My preference (and my downfall) is to gobble up small handfuls (mostly reds and pinks) at a time — one reason I can’t have them in the house. How do stack up against these stats?

  • 70% of kids aged 6–11 say they prefer to eat Easter jellybeans one at a time
  • 23% say they eat several at once
  • Boys (29%) are more likely to eat a handful than girls (18%)
  • Kids say their favorite Easter jellybean flavors are cherry (20%), strawberry (12%), grape (10%), lime (7%), and blueberry (6%).

What’s In Jelly Beans?

They’re primarily made of sugar and also usually contain gelatin, corn syrup, modified food starch, and less than 0.5% of citric acid, sodium citrate, artificial flavors, confectioners glaze, pectin, carnauba wax, white mineral oil, magnesium hydroxide, and artificial colors (takes some of the fun out of them, doesn’t it).

Even though they may give you Technicolor insides, they are fat free.  On average:

  • 10 small jelly beans (11g) have 41 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no protein, and 10.3 grams of carbs
  • 10 large jelly beans (1 oz or 28g) have 105 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no protein, and 26.2g carbs
  • 10 Jelly Bellies have 40 calories, no fat, no protein, and 10g carbs

Some Jelly Belly Jelly Bean Trivia

  • Jelly Bellys were invented in 1976. They were the first jelly beans to be sold in single flavors and to come with a menu of flavor choices.
  • It takes 7 to 21 days to make a single Jelly Belly jelly bean.
  • Very Cherry was the most popular Jelly Belly flavor for two decades until 1998, when Buttered Popcorn took over. Very Cherry moved back into the top spot by only 8 million beans in 2003.
  • Jelly Bellies were the first jelly beans in outer space – they were sent on the 1983 flight of the space shuttle Challenger by President Reagan.

 

A Box Of Chocolates

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In the US chocolate candy outsells all other types of candy combined, by 2 to 1.  Around seven billion pounds of chocolate candy are manufactured each year in the US and during the week before Valentine’s Day about 1.1 billion boxed chocolates,  about 58 million pounds, will be sold.

There are 2300 calories, 140 grams of fat, 270 grams of carbs, and 31 grams of protein in a pound of milk chocolate. A lot has been said about the heart healthy benefits of chocolate, especially dark chocolate, but it’s important to remember that chocolate is still a high calorie, high fat treat.

But Isn’t Chocolate Good For Me?

In moderation—and, depending on the type—the answer is yes. Chocolate’s health benefits come from cocoa and dark chocolate has more cocoa than milk chocolate.  White chocolate, without any cocoa in it, isn’t really chocolate. German scientists studied 19,357 people for a decade and found that those who ate the most chocolate (average 7.5 grams a day) had lower blood pressure and a 39% lower risk of having a heart attack or stroke than people who ate the smallest amount (1.7 grams a day).

Chocolate, especially dark chocolate, contains flavonols which have antioxidant properties. Those Valentine’s chocolates can be caloric and moderately high in fat, one-third of it the type of saturated fat that is not heart healthy. Extra ingredients like crème and caramel fillings can add lots of extra fat and calories.

If you see “Chocolate Liquor” in the ingredients list of chocolate candy, it is not alcoholic but a thick paste of ground cocoa beans, or nibs.  The higher the amount of chocolate liquor, the greater the amount of beneficial flavonoids and in chocolate vocabulary, “cocoa” and “cacao” are synonymous as are “beans” and “nibs.”

Just So You Know

A treat is something that’s usually associated with pleasure and on Valentine’s Day, with love.  To celebrate the occasion it’s just fine to enjoy a piece or two.

  • Hershey’s Kisses, 9 pieces:  230 calories, 12g fat
  • Hershey’s Special Dark Hearts, 5 pieces:  220 calories, 7g fat
  • Reese’s Peanut Butter Hearts, snack size:  170 calories, 10g fat
  • Russell Stover boxed chocolates, 2 pieces:  150 calories, 4g fat
  • Dove Dark Chocolate Hearts, 5 pieces:  210 calories, 13g fat
  • Godiva boxed chocolates, 4 pieces:  210 calories, 12g fat

What Does Your Favorite Candy Heart Say?

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“Be Mine,” “Kiss me,”  “Sweet Talk.” Sweethearts Conversation Hearts, the small heart-shaped pastel colored candy with the familiar sayings have been a Valentine’s Day treat since 1902. Their manufacturer, NECCO, the New England Confectionery Company, in business since 1847, produces more than 8 billion of the candy conversation hearts a year.

In the 1860’s the New England Confectionary Company began printing sayings on candy like “Married in Pink, He will take to drink,”or “Married in White, you have chosen right,” and “Married in Satin, Love will not be lasting.” (Not such a good send-off for being married in pink or satin!!!)

The conversation heart sayings have been updated over the years with new ones added periodically. The candy is quite popular — NECCO sells out of their hearts — 100,000 pounds a day — in six weeks.

A few years ago NECCO asked the public how they wanted to express their love and in 2010 they introduced new flavors and sayings. The new flavors are strawberry, green apple, lemon, grape, orange, and blue raspberry new sayings include “Tweet Me,” “Text Me,” “You Rock,” “Soul Mate,” “Love Bug,” and “Me + You.”

Although you’d be hard pressed to call them nutritious, candy hearts are fat free, sodium free, and a caloric bargain at about 3 calories apiece for the small hearts and about 6 calories apiece for the larger “Motto” hearts.

In my mind, candy hearts and paper Valentines are absolutely linked with elementary school Valentine’s Day celebrations.  How about you?

 

Celebrating The New Year In Good Eating Style

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The earliest recorded celebration of the arrival of the new year dates back 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylon.  The first new moon following the vernal equinox, or the day in the spring with an equal amount of sunlight and darkness, signaled the start of a new year.

Today, New Year’s Day–the first day of the calendar year–is celebrated in almost every country in the world, but depending the type of calendar, not all countries or cultures welcome the New Year on January 1st. The Chinese, Egyptian, Jewish, Roman, and Mohammedan years all have different start dates.

January 1 was recognized as New Years Day in the 1500’s with the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar. In 1582 most Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar but the British didn’t adopt it until 1752. Until then the British Empire and their American colonies celebrated the new year in March.

Some Traditions and Legends

  • In ancient Rome the first day of the New Year honored Janus, the god of gates, doors, beginnings and endings. Janus had two faces.  One looked ahead to see what the new year would bring and the other looked backward to see what had happened during the past year. To celebrate, the Romans gave gifts to friends and family members –and sometimes to Senators in exchange for favors.
  • Druid priests In England celebrated the New Year on March 10. They gave branches of mistletoe to people for charms. Later on, English people cleaned their chimneys on New Year’s Day believing that this brought good luck to the household for the coming year (which is where the expression “cleaning the slate” comes from).
  • In many countries people eat specific foods to bring good luck for the coming year.  In Spain they eat grapes, round fruits in the Philippines, suckling pig in Austria, soba noodles in Japan, rice pudding in Norway, black-eyed peas in the southern US, and cake with a hidden coin in Greece.  Other common worldwide customs are making resolutions–which dates to the Babylonians, and watching fireworks.
  • Chinese New Year, an all East and Southeast Asia celebration, is known as “Spring Festival” in China. Filled with tradition and ritual it’s usually considered the most important traditional holiday for Chinese around the world.  It begins on the first day of the first month in the traditional Chinese lunar calendar and is celebrated with lucky red envelopes filled with money, lion and dragon dances, drums, fireworks, firecrackers.  Traditional sweet sticky the last course rice cakes and round savory dumplings symbolize never-ending wealth. On New Year’s Eve the meal includes fish to symbolize abundance. In the first five days of the New Year people eat long noodles to symbolize long life and round dumplings shaped like the full moon to represent the family unit and perfection.

Some New Year’s Eve Tips

If you have big plans for New Year’s Eve, enjoy yourself by devising an eating strategy before you go out and committing to carrying it out.  If you’re watching your weight, have a plan – you can still enjoy yourself and not feel deprived. With a plan you design just for you, you’ll have a much better chance at succeeding – and not end up hating yourself and cursing the scale on the first day of the New Year.  Here are some ideas:

  • If you’re going to a party with lots of hors d’oeuvres decide beforehand how many you’ll have.  Three varieties, one of each?  Two varieties, two of each?
  • Alternate your drink of choice – wine, champagne, liquor – with sparkling water to cut calories, help with sobriety, and make it easier for you to resist food temptations.  Hold that glass of sparkling water or diet soda in your hand – the only people who will know it’s non-alcoholic is you and the bartender (who most likely could care less about what you are drinking).
  • If you’re going to dinner decide if you’re going to have dessert ahead of time.  If you are going to indulge – even if it’s the house specialty smothered in whipped cream — compensate by having a salad with dressing on the side as your appetizer.  Nix the bread.  Just balance your caloric intake the best you can.
  • If it’s a pizza, wings, and beer affair think about ways to minimize your fat intake – pizza and wings (especially the dip) are loaded.  Cut the pizza slice in half – leave the other half in the box.  When you go back for seconds, retrieve the other half slice. You’ll end up eating just one slice but  feel like you’re having two.  If you can, take off some of the cheese – the main source of fat.  Some people use paper towels or napkins to absorb some of the extra fat floating on the surface of a slice.  Up to you – but it really cuts down on calories – mopping up the equivalent of two teaspoons of oil knocks off just under 100 calories.

How Far You’d Need To Walk to Burn Off A New Year’s Party Calories

If you go to a New Year’s party and have:

  • one Irish coffee
  • one glass of wine
  • one cup of coffee with cream and sugar
  • one cup of eggnog
  • one 3 oz Stinger
  • 5 large olives
  • half a cup of mixed nuts
  • one oz of potato or tortilla chips
  • one teaspoon of chip dip, a mini-quiche
  • 2 oz of boiled shrimp with cocktail sauce
  • two chocolate mints
  • one slice of pecan pie with  half a cup of ice cream
  • one small piece of fudge
  • one iced gingerbread cookie

you would have consumed 27030 calories and you would need to walk 27.03 miles, or 54060 steps (assuming you cover one mile in 2,000 steps) to burn off those calories.