Well, did you know?

With so much of the media full of money saving ideas to make up for our Christmas spending, we thought we would also bring you a money saving idea on AudlemOnline.

According to the BBC's website yesterday, dates are distributed in the same way across 1986 and 2014, meaning that anyone finding a 28-year-old calendar or diary knocking around can re-use it this year.

However, Audlem Online's own research department has conducted an extensive investigation and we can reveal that if you live your life according to the date for Easter given in the 1986 diary, you will be celebrating it three weeks before everybody else – this year Easter is on April 20th, but In 1986 it was on 30th March.

Why the difference?

As you will know, Easter is a moveable feast, meaning it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. The First Council of Nicaea (AD325) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the March equinox.

Then in AD664 the Synod of Whitby determined that the British church (which up to then had been doing its own thing as regards the date of Easter) should fall in line with the Nicaean rules, which are followed to this day.

Ecclesiastically, the equinox is reckoned to be on 21st March (although the astronomical equinox occurs on 20 March in most years), and the 'Full Moon' is not necessarily on the astronomically correct date. The date of Easter therefore varies between 22nd March and 25th April.

In fact the most recent year in which Easter Sunday fell on April 20th was 1930, and if we have to go back that far then many of the current Bank Holidays will be different anyway.

Conclusion

Which all goes to show that rather than searching for an unused 1986 calendar, it's better, as announced on New Year's Day, to pop into Williams' newsagents where 2014 calendars and diaries are at half-price.

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