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Comment by lisper | Hacker News Reader

> You know things are intense when you are programming a computer to perform the Computus (calculation of the date of Easter).

Seems like that is a red herring since Easter is always on a Sunday, which, it seems to me, is all that could possibly matter given the description of the problem.

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You need to compute Easter so you know when Good Friday is, if the buses run different than normal on that holiday.

edit: or, because the buses would observe the Easter holiday the next day, quoting OP:

> including the observed holiday which is the weekday after the holiday if the original holiday falls on a weekend.

But Good Friday has the same property as Easter, namely, that it's always on a Friday (duh!). Just like Mardi Gras is always on a Tuesday and Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday.

What if the bus service runs a holiday schedule on Good Friday?

Why would that make it necessary to know the exact date?

Which Sunday? Just glance at Wikipedia to show it's not that easy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_Easter

Sure, the Sunday it's on moves around, but why would that matter? You're just trying to count the number of days the bus runs during a year under conditions like it runs/doesn't run on holidays/weekends. Easter is always a holiday, and always on a weekend. Under what circumstances would it matter which weekend?

If the weekend rule was not part of the given schedule.

It can matter if Easter can be on the same day as another holiday, like May Day.

Ah. That makes sense. I thought Easter was always in March or April, but it can indeed occasionally be in May. TIL. Thanks!

Orthodox easter is often in May, including this year (May 5). Western Easter is never in May.

Can the public holiday of Easter be on May Day in any English-speaking country?

On most countries in Europe either Good Friday and/or Easter Monday are Holidays…

Then you have Ash wednesday and some other holidays around Lent (6 weeks before Easter)…

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