[Avodah] Rosh Hashanah and Easter

[Mottel Gutnick]

I have a theory about dechiyat ADU (the calendar rule that Rosh 
Hashanah may not occur on a Sunday, Wednesday or Friday). The reason 
for DU (Wed and Fri) is that Yom Kippur should not occur 
consecutively with shabbat, either because of food spoilage or 
because of unburied corpses having to wait for two days - both great 
health risks. The reason usually given for A (Sunday) is so that 
Hoshana Rabba should not fall on Shabbat, which would have interfered 
with the custom of "beating Hoshanot" (the willow twigs). This reason 
has always struck me as somewhat strange, and even somewhat feeble.
 
Until Constantine's Council of Nicaea in 352, when the Church broke
this nexus, the date of Easter was dependent on Pesach. Even after
that council created its own rules for dating Easter, they are, to
this day, both early early spring festivals.

The ADU rule was a late development in medieval times, precisely the 
period in which Seder night was often a dangerous time for Jews 
living amongst Christians, who accused us of celebrating the death of 
their god, symbolically drinking his blood, and a good deal else 
besides, which was often the excuse for bloody pogroms. I believe 
that it was in response to this danger that the ideas associated with 
seder night being called leil shimurim came to the fore. It was 
certainly the cause of the opening of the door being postponed from 
early in the evening (at "Kol dichfin yetei veyeichol" in "Ha Lachma 
Anya") to much later at "Shfoch Chamatcha", and perhaps even for the 
"Shfoch Chamatcha" itself.

Perhaps the dechiya A of ADU was to prevent Pesach falling on Good 
Friday which would have greatly increased that danger. If that was 
the real reason, it would have been politic to conceal the real 
motive for it from becoming known to Christians, and hence the 
"excuse" about Hoshana Rabba.