Bright Week, Easter Sunday (Orthodox)

Bright Week is the seven days beginning with Pascha itself, reckoned on this rule by the Julian computus that the Orthodox churches use to fix Easter, a calculation that keeps the older method that Western Christianity abandoned at the Gregorian reform of fifteen eighty two. Because the Julian and Gregorian calendars have drifted apart in the centuries since, and because the Orthodox computus additionally requires Pascha to fall after the Jewish Passover in keeping with an ancient council ruling, Orthodox Easter frequently lands on a different Sunday than the Western date, and Bright Week follows whichever date the Julian reckoning produces.

Within the week itself, Orthodox practice treats every day as a continuation of Pascha rather than an ordinary week following a single feast day, most visibly in the custom of keeping the doors of the icon screen, the Royal Doors, open throughout, a posture normally reserved for the liturgy itself, symbolizing the tomb thrown open. All fasting is suspended for the full week regardless of the day, a much stronger relaxation than the Western Easter Octave observes, and the week closes with Thomas Sunday, the Sunday after Pascha, at which the Royal Doors close again and the ordinary fasting calendar resumes. The whole arrangement depends on the Julian computus this rule names, since Bright Week's dates are only ever anchored to whichever day that older calculation assigns Pascha.