Christian Holiday Countdown Calculator
Pick a holiday and a year to see its exact date and a live countdown — including the moveable feasts (Easter and everything timed from it), calculated exactly, not estimated.
Countdown
How each date is calculated
Christmas is fixed every year — December 25. Thanksgiving (US) is fixed by rule, not date — the fourth Thursday of November. Everything else on this list is a "moveable feast," calculated from Easter: Ash Wednesday is 46 days before Easter (the start of the 40 days of Lent, not counting Sundays), Palm Sunday is the Sunday before Easter, Good Friday is the Friday before Easter, and Pentecost is 49 days (seven weeks) after Easter.
Easter's own date is computed using the standard Gregorian Easter algorithm (adopted by Western churches), which finds the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon that falls on or after March 21 — not the astronomical full moon, but a calculated approximation the church has used since the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 standardized how Easter should be set. Eastern Orthodox churches, which still follow the Julian calendar for this calculation, often land on a different date — this calculator gives the Western/Gregorian date used by most Protestant and Catholic churches.
Frequently asked questions
Why doesn't Easter fall on the same date every year?
Easter is tied to the lunar calendar (the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox), not a fixed calendar date — so it moves within a roughly five-week window (March 22 to April 25) from year to year.
Why might this differ from an Orthodox church's Easter date?
Eastern Orthodox churches calculate Easter using the older Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar most Western churches use — the two calendars have drifted apart over the centuries, so Orthodox Easter often (not always) falls on a different Sunday. This calculator gives the Western/Gregorian date.
Is this the same as Passover?
Related but not the same calculation — Passover follows the Hebrew calendar (Nisan 15), not the Gregorian/Easter calculation this tool uses. Use the Hebrew Date Converter for Passover's exact date. Easter's timing was originally connected to Passover in the early church, which is part of why both move around the same season.
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