Every year on Good Friday, which falls on the Friday before Easter, Christians remember the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Good Friday was marked as a day of mourning, fasting, and penance from the beginning of Christianity; this tradition is reflected in the German word Karfreitag, which means “Sorrowful Friday.
The majority of Christian tradition has maintained, in accordance with the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), that Jesus’ final dinner with his followers the night before his crucifixion was a Passover seder. According to the Jewish calendar, that would put Jesus’ death on 15 Nisan, or the first day of Passover, which begins at dusk. The Gregorian (Western) calendar indicates that April 7 is the appropriate day. (The Gospel However, John claims that when Jesus’ last meal was held, Passover had not yet started, placing the date of Jesus’ death on Nisan 14. But Christians don’t celebrate that specific day. Rather, they observe the seemingly malleable Passover date, which is in line with the Jewish lunisolar calendarBy connecting the Last Supper to the seder, it is more meaningful than the Gregorian solar calendar. Despite the problems with that premise, Good Friday and Easter dates have been established based on it. Good Friday, therefore, occurs between March 20, which is the earliest date for Passover, and April 23, which is two days after Easter.