The consumer-led identification of the days of Easter is at odds with the Church calendar and interferes with our celebrations. Parishes should think and plan with a view to the 90 days from Lent to Pentecost.

a challenge for the astute Tablet reader: on a day in the Easter Octave, say Easter Wednesday, try to buy an Easter egg, either in your local hypermarket or at a corner shop in your vicinity. I bet you won’t be able to find one on sale: even though Easter eggs have been present in the shops at least since the start of spring and have filled the supermarket shelves to overflowing since about Ash Wednesday. Once the actual day is past, Easter is presumed to be over and done with.
It is a strange feature of those who control the consumer calendar, that every feast is celebrated to the full beforehand rather than on the day itself or indeed on any day in its immediate aftermath. Christmas and Easter share a common fate in this regard. Even the Cadbury’s creme eggs that seemed to appear on the shelves the day after Christmas head for hibernation once Holy Week is over.

This approach to the calendar poses problems for those who plan the Easter liturgies. Secular Easter celebrations dominate Holy Week to the extent that its very title is lost to Easter – and then those days after Easter Monday, when the Church pulls out all the bells and whistles of celebratory liturgies, are lost to title-less weekdays, dedicated to whichever is the next feast of the consumer calendar (Father’s Day perhaps?).