What a confusing holiday. I read the wikipedia page and understand the rationale (sort of), but it still seems strange for a holiday to vary so much. This year it's March 31 and next year it doesn't come until April 20. 
In googling around, I found this page, courtesy of the Census Bureau: Frequency of the Date of Easter 1600 to 2099
Obviously this research was important, because "These frequencies were used to generate the calendar means used by the most recent version of X-12-ARIMA to deseasonalize the Easter flow regressor generated by the software."
So it looks like March 31 is actually one of the two most common dates for Easter... it falls on March 31 4.4% of the time (April 16 is also 4.4%). But it sure seems early to me for some reason. Happy Easter anyway!
In googling around, I found this page, courtesy of the Census Bureau: Frequency of the Date of Easter 1600 to 2099
Obviously this research was important, because "These frequencies were used to generate the calendar means used by the most recent version of X-12-ARIMA to deseasonalize the Easter flow regressor generated by the software."
So it looks like March 31 is actually one of the two most common dates for Easter... it falls on March 31 4.4% of the time (April 16 is also 4.4%). But it sure seems early to me for some reason. Happy Easter anyway!
