How many days until Easter?

Easter Sunday moves each year, falling between late March and late April according to the ecclesiastical calculation from the spring full moon, and this countdown tracks it to the date rather than to a fixed day. In the United Arab Emirates it is not a public holiday: Good Friday is a working day, Easter Monday is a working day, and the federal holiday list makes no reference to any of it.

For the Christian communities here — Filipino, Indian, Arab, European, African — it is nonetheless one of the busiest weekends of the year. The church compounds in Jebel Ali and Abu Dhabi run services continuously across the weekend to handle the numbers, and the car parks around them fill long before each one starts.

Timing tends to collide with the school year. Spring break in the Emirates is set by the education authority rather than by the church calendar, so in some years it covers Easter neatly and in others it falls a fortnight either side, which decides whether families travel or stay. It also lands at the point where the pleasant half of the year is ending: by late April, daytime temperatures are already climbing past the level at which anything outdoors has to be done early or late.

Once the date passes, the countdown recalculates for next year's Easter, which will not be in the same place on the calendar.