It does have a fixed date - the first Sunday after the full moon following
the new moon in March - or something like that :-}


quote
The Easter Season

It might come as no surprise to discover that Easter was originally a
pagan festival beloved by the ancient Anglo-Saxons who celebrated the
return of spring with an uproarious festival commemorating their goddess
of offspring and of springtime, Eastre. When the second-century
Christian missionaries encountered the tribes of the north with their
pagan celebrations, they attempted to convert them to Christianity and
in the process, “Christianised” the existing pagan festivals As it
happened, the pagan festival of Eastre occurred around the same time of
year as the Christian observance of the Resurrection of Christ, which
was originally at the time of the Jewish Passover. It made sense,
therefore, to alter the festival itself, to make it a Christian
celebration as converts were slowly won over. The early name, Eastre,
was eventually changed to its modern spelling, Easter.

The Official Date of Easter

In A.D. 325, Easter, which had until that time been variously celebrated
on different days of the week, including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday,
became fixed in the Christian calendar by decree of the Council of
Nicaea, convened by Emperor Constantine. It issued the Easter Rule which
gave exact, although far from straight forward guidelines (it was a
government decree after all) as to when the death and resurrection of
Christ were to be officially celebrated. It was worked out considering
the phases of the Moon (how pagan is that!) and as a result, Easter will
always be celebrated on a Sunday between the dates of March 22 and April
25. end of quote

http://tinyurl.com/c5tba6

Bobbie.