Hello Huguley friends! It is good to see you again today. Did you spend at least part of last week still snuggled under a blanket? I did. If I wasn’t at work or the church or helping somewhere else, I spent some time bundled up on the bed napping! But, if you know me much at all, you know I can nap at the drop of the hat! I will even take a nap at 6 p.m., knowing I still have several more hours ‘til it is officially bedtime!

By the time you read this column on Saturday afternoon, the second Friday of the three weekend drama Walk with Jesus taking place at Happy Valley Baptist Church will have been finished. What a blessing the drama has been! To those of us in the cast and crew and to the folks that have come through the drama and been blessed by it that way! I can’t give you exact numbers but over 100 folks came through the first weekend. I hope you were able to take the tour.

As we are in the middle of the Easter season, here are some basic tidbits about why Easter falls when it does  every year. If it seems strange that Easter and April Fool’s Day are taking place on the same day this year, then just remember that Easter is a holiday that doesn’t have a set date. As such, it changes when it will take place every year.

The reason that Easter doesn’t have a set date is due to how it is determined. The day for Easter to take place is the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox. This is why Easter doesn’t take place on the same day every year. If you’re really wanting to prepare early, know that Easter in 2019 will take place on April 21. The big difference between the dates for Easter in 2018 and 2019 are a perfect example of why people are asking early about when the holiday takes place.

Today, Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, the full moon after the spring equinox. Once the date of the full moon is set, it’s easy to determine the date of Easter Sunday and other Easter holidays. Why Sunday? In 325 CE, the Council of Nicaea, a gathering of Christian bishops, decided that there should be a more organized and universal way to decide when Easter would be celebrated, the AJC previously reported. They decided that the holiday would be held the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the spring equinox, which always occurs on March 21.

If the full moon falls on a Sunday, Easter is delayed a week.  Why does the date change each year?  The date of Easter changes, because the Paschal full moon can fall on various days in different time zones. But because Easter falls on a Sunday after the March 21 spring equinox, it will always occur on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25. That’s also why Easter and Christian holidays leading up to that day, such as Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Good Friday, are referred to as “moveable feasts.”

Do Christians celebrate Easter Sunday on the same day? According to Encyclopedia Brittanica, the Eastern Orthodox typically celebrates Easter Sunday later than Protestants and Roman Catholics. That’s because Eastern Orthodox churches didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar method and instead follow the Julian calendar, a solar calendar adopted by Julius Caesar in 45 BC, which is 13 days ahead of the Gregorian calendar. If you weren’t already confused about the dates earlier, I am sure you are now!

Let me relate something that happened in the last few days to my husband and me. We were out running errands and had to take the dog to the vet (just one of those regular days off from regular work days) out messing around. I’m not going to call her name because I didn’t ask her ahead of time but we ran into a lady we knew and she told me how much she enjoys reading the column from the Huguley area.

Her son used to ride my husband’s bus when he was in school. I thanked her for letting me know that she reads the column and told her she needed to call me sometime and let me have her news. She said that she didn’t do anything but she likes to sit on the porch with a cup of coffee and the Valley Times News.  A lot of folks do that. I wish I could assure you that the stuff I see on Facebook could be seen by everyone in the local area. But, there are still hundreds and hundreds that do not have the Internet so a lot of the stuff you think the Valley is seeing is going unread by a huge bunch of folks. They still sit on the porch and wait to read the community news each week. If it isn’t there, they, and we, are disappointed.

Some of the people that I’ve been hearing from for years had become very, very, close friends. I have visited in their homes, met their children, gone out to eat with them, exchanged Christmas gifts with them, and think of them as my extended family. That is one thing that this column means to me; knowing that I have you out there reading it each week and anticipating it coming out each week. The column belongs to the community not just to me. I long to hear from each of you some during this upcoming year. I know you’re busy. I am too.

But I do miss you, miss hearing from you. I want to thank all of you that have been my faithful readers for such a long time and I look forward to having you stop back by and hear or read whatever is going on in your neck of the woods this past week. Thanks again for supporting me and letting me know that you’re still out there ready to read the Valley paper each week I had one lady to call me last week and tell me that she had sent me some two emails but she had sent them to the wrong email address. My email address will make you think of very strict parents. It does not have a K in it: It is a T. So pay attention. It is strictlynews@charter.net  I look forward to hearing from YOU very soon.

I will accept news any way you’d like to send it. Email me at strictlynews@charter.net (don’t forget the T— don’t use a K) or you can text me at 706-773-6550 or send it to me on Messenger or Facebook. Lots of options ought to give everyone a method of choice. Just choose the one you’d like to use. We would all appreciate it. Well, I am closing out now. Have a great week end friends!