Easter in Latvia Easter in Latvia The Christian festival of Easter is celebrated in Latvia as Lieldienas (). Lieldienas enters Holy Week with Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, but Sunday will mark first Lieldienas. Second Lieldienas is on Monday of the following week. Each day has a special significance. Also, many pagan elements of celebrating Lieldienas have become a tradition. Nowadays, the common date of Lieldienas is the first Sunday after the first full moon, after or during the vernal equinox. Thus, the Western Christian Church Lieldienas falls on a date between 22 March and 25 April. In Eastern
Byzantine calendar except that: The leap day of the Byzantine calendar was obtained in an identical manner to the bissextile day of the original Roman version of the Julian calendar, by doubling the sixth day before the calends of March, i.e., by doubling 24 February. The "Byzantine World Era" was gradually replaced in the Orthodox Church by the "Christian Era", which was utilized initially by Patriarch Theophanes I Karykes in 1597, afterwards by Patriarch Cyril Lucaris in 1626, and then formally established by the Church in 1728. Meanwhile, as Russia received Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium, she inherited the Orthodox Calendar based on