Passover and Easter Typically Overlap, But Not in 2024

Since the start of the current century, the holidays of Passover and Easter have overlapped every year but four, namely in 2005, 2008, 2016, and the current year, 2024.

It’s not mere coincidence that the two holidays overlap as much as they do and they arrive together almost every spring, just like blossoming tulips, and the fact that they did not do so this year almost makes it seem as if a great misalignment has occurred.

Rest assured that this is not the case and the fact is that the two occur as much as a month apart 15% of the time.

Unfortunately, no one told the nation’s supermarkets about the odd difluence this year and supermarket managers have patiently been waiting (and waiting) for customers to start shopping in the aisles of kosher-for-Passover food since February.

For the past 100 years, Maxwell House Haggadot have been as much a part of the Passover celebration as matzoh ball soup and charoseth.

Matthew Rosenblatt, a management consultant who lives in Great Neck on Long Island, wondered whether he had stepped into a time machine in late February when his local supermarket seemed to have gone straight from Valentine’s Day to Passover, bypassing George Washington’s birthday, Leap Day, the first day of Spring, and Easter.

This year, when people sitting down to the Passover Seder comment that “the holidays are late this year,” it will be an understatement of sorts as they are very, very late.

Blame a headscratchingly complicated ancient 354-day lunisolar calendar – based on the phases of the moon that has a 19-year cycle of leap years – which occasionally adds an entire extra month in some cases and adds and removes days to other months, as well as a decision by the Catholic Church in 325 C.E. that Easter would always fall on the first Sunday after the paschal full moon on or after the vernal equinox.

This causes the situation where, as was the case in 2016, Easter fell on March 27 and Passover started on April 22 and the discrepancy is exacerbated by the varying calendars that Jews and Christians use to set their respective holidays.

Jewish holidays are set by the lunar calendar, while most Christians set their holidays via the Gregorian calendar, which uses the sun (Eastern Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar, which also uses the sun but did not accurately reflect the actual time it takes the earth to circle once around the sun, so each date on the Julian calendar occurs 13 days after its corresponding date on the Gregorian calendar).

Meanwhile, the Jewish month is on average 29.5 days long, and a lunar year is only 354 days so the Jewish calendar has to add a leap month every few years to keep a springtime holiday such as Passover in the correct season.

Another unusual occurrence took place in both 2018 and 2019, namely the confluence of the first night of Passover and Good Friday. Such a pairing won’t happen again for another 90 years.

When the two holidays do converge, which at 85% is more often than not, it makes life much easier for everything from schools that have to plan a recess for both Passover and Easter and families who plan to travel for the holidays, be it to visit relatives or travel to the Holy Land.

Some supermarkets may have been unprepared for the amount of time aisles of Passover foods would go unpurchased but the intersection of Passover and the secular food world has had some happy endings. Witness the long-standing relationship between Maxwell House coffee and American Jewry. It was almost a century ago that the coffee company’s marketing firm was able to secure a rabbinic ruling that coffee beans, despite being legumes, were kosher for Passover. This in turn allowed Maxwell House to begin what has now become the longest-running consumer promotion in U.S. history, the distribution of a complimentary Haggadah, the text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder – the word “Seder” means order – around the Passover season to promote coffee consumption during the holiday, which runs for eight days.

Maxwell House Haggadot are, for many families, as much a part of the Passover celebration as matzoh ball soup and charoseth. Over 60 million Haggadot are in print and the company joyfully looks forward to printing millions more in the coming years.

(Photo: Accura Media Group)