Lentorama 2016: #Lent

Day 23: or Day 1 if you live in Cairo

First day of #Lent in #Coptic #Orthodox calendar. Praying it is a blessed time of spiritual growth preparing for Glorious Resurrection Feast

— Bishop Angaelos (@BishopAngaelos) March 7, 2016

So while Christians in the west have been dealing with a lack of coffee and meat on Fridays for about three weeks, Orthodox Christians are just getting started. Everyone uses the same starting point to determine when to start figuring out when Easter is, but not the same calendar - western Christians use the Gregorian calendar (the same one we use day to day), while Orthodox use the Julian calendar. Without going into details, this alters the calculations enough that the dates can be, like this year, more than a month apart.

But then there's next year, when they're on the same date. Time is hard.