How does United States mark Easter?
Easter Sunday
- Local date
- March 28, 2027
- When is it?
- The Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox; not a federal holiday
The United States does not list Easter as a federal holiday, and Good Friday is not one either. No day named after a Christian observance appears on the federal holiday list except Christmas. Part of why Easter does not 'need' a holiday is the same reason as in India: it already falls on a Sunday. The actual content of the day — church services, eggs, a family lunch, the egg roll on the White House lawn — all happens inside a weekend that already existed, taking nothing from the calendar. Easter in the United States always falls on a Sunday, so it neither needs to be nor ever has been a federal holiday — a federal holiday exists to release a working day, and Sunday is not one. The difference is made by the Friday before: Good Friday is a state holiday in some states and not in others, so across state lines the same Easter weekend can contain a different number of working days.
What is this topic?
Easter's institutional position differs sharply across these four places, and not in the direction most people expect: Muslim-majority Indonesia lists four Christian observances as national holidays — Good Friday, Easter, Ascension and Christmas; the Christian-majority United States lists none of them as federal holidays except Christmas; Brazil hands the decision on religious holidays to municipal councils with a cap of four; and India's national list carries Good Friday rather than Easter Sunday.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.