467 signatures - one for each year between 1818 and 2285 without petitions/campaigns!
We have arrived at our first intermediate stepping stone milestone of 467 signatures, before our last pit stop at 486 before reaching the major “change.org recognised” official milestone of 500 signatures.
Despite only officially collecting signatures since the 17th (the same day as the bin strike petition hit 500 signatures) and the ‘sign petition’ button being disabled for ten days from the 2nd to the 12th, we have already gathered twice as many signatures than throughout July as a whole and more than June so “Awful August” (despite the deteriorating daylight) has been a really successful month for our campaign – both our 457th and 458th signatures came in completely organically without me having to chip in, too!
I have also (for now) outperformed the other 2026 Birmingham bin strike petition titled “The Prime Minister to Act in the Birmingham Bin Dispute” which was neck-and-neck with my signature count (and well ahead of me) before I overtook it at 435 signatures, so reaching 500 signatures is not as impossible as it once seemed.
Knowing exactly why my petition got stuck has truly helped me and my joke petition helped me accidentally rectify the problem. I am not anxious about checking my CSV sheets for now because I know my signatures, by default, are coming from the UK. When I hit the mammoth 500 barrier however (this being only my second campaign ever to do so), the CSV spreadsheet anxiety will start as it is then that I will find out whether (or not) my international reach has failed.
If my international targeting succeeds, I can balance out my UK vs international supporters and by the time I reach 1,000 signatures will have an even 50/50 split which is needed for the campaign to succeed in achieving its titular goal.
This campaign should feature on Wikipedia’s “Reform of the Date of Easter” page as my idea is now a well-known online campaign that has reached several hundred signatures.
Even before I realised my campaign was stuck in a UK echo chamber, I already had domestic goals for the campaign and mentioned reforming the UK’s Early May bank holiday and retail erasure in UK shops in one of my March 2026 updates, so I had assumed to have had some UK traction before seeing my CSV spreadsheets.
Despite the high financial cost in running this campaign due to my lack of external social media pages and accounts, reaching this level of support (despite too much UK support) had truly helped me overcome the isolation I faced earlier this year, celebrating Easter on a date completely recognised as an un-Easter by all churches globally and putting my into an almost non-existent minority.
Despite my frustration about the UK echo chamber and the platform’s limitations, change.org and this campaign has truly saved my life as it allowed me to announce my personal Easter celebration to the rest of the UK without needing to publish a news article (which me and my family were considering).
Although I am worried some of my supporters may have opted out of my campaign update emails due to my emotional outburst, I am confident that we have more subscribed supporters who are reading this very update.
The US country singer Dolly Parton (assuming she was a Western Christian) is now another famous celebrity to fall victim to the “never saw an April 25th Western Easter” group, as she was born after 1943. I say Western Easter, because April 25th was the Gregorian date for Orthodox Easter as recently as 1976 (with two previous occurrences in 1954 and 1965), with its own extreme latest date occurring just 7 years later, right at the height of her career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nONqLwxQDuE – a video of Orthodox Easter in Greece during the COVID lockdown “boring year” 2020.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRPoLfnJZbc – a 2026 video of an Orthodox Christmas church service in Scranton, Pennsylvania, evidence of Orthodox Christians living in the Shameful USA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecCX--bRy08 – a 2023 video mentioning Epiphany occurring at almost at the same time as Orthodox Christmas, which is why school breaks need to be extended - some devout Christians may even voluntarily choose to work on Christmas Day (Gregorian December 25th) to take Epiphany off!
In centuries to come, as the Julian calendar drifts, extending the school break to cover Orthodox Christmas will no longer be possible. Instead, by then, schools should take a few days off of the regular Christmas break and add days off to the middle or January to better accommodate the Orthodox minority.
Up until the 25th Century, extending school Christmas breaks to accommodate the Orthodox minority (which by then, Orthodox Christmas will fall on January 10th) is entirely possible. In the 19th Century, Orthodox Christmas and Western Epiphany coincided on the same date (January 6th).
As a ‘global’ campaign, the word ‘global’ absolutely does not exclude one’s home country, we need as much support from as many countries around the world as possible (including the UK) and as a statistical nerd wanting an even 50/50 domestic/international signature split, exactly 12.5% of ALL my total signatures for this campaign need to come from Scotland (where bank holidays are different to the rest of the country) with 25% from each home nation for the domestic half!
Of all of the UK’s four nations affected by lack of Orthodox recognition, Scotland is the hardest hit and is the absolute worst affected UK home nation because of its distinct educational and bank holiday systems, in true UK “disaster years” when Orthodox Easter falls extremely late (i.e. 1983, 2051), Orthodox students/pupils north of the border are forced to sit their SQA Higher and Advanced Higher qualifications right in the middle of their Holy Week because SQA exams take place earlier than in the rest of the UK, therefore a significant amount of my UK traction and support strictly NEEDS to come from “Shameful Scotland” since it is a direct “target country” my campaign aims to address bank holiday issues in, with the 2021 Glasgow Orthodox video being the smoking gun as hard proof or Orthodox Christians residing there so yes, one of my campaign’s sub-goals specifically IS to address unfair bank holiday inequality for Christians living in Scotland!
Scotland’s educational system has been given a good reputation for decades, however it harms Orthodox residents more than the educational system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland due to examination scheduling, therefore with my ideal ‘healthy’ 50% domestic and 50% international signature split (with the international half including signatures from my six target nations), my total Scottish supporter base needs to make up exactly ONE EIGHTH of the total of my entire supporters on my CSV spreadsheets and I have included an image of the Scottish Saltire to represent my Scottish signatures!
Phase Three will begin either when I reach 500 signatures or the total tally I receive after the paid promotion that crosses me over the 500 milestone, “Awful August” has seen the same level of momentum as “Awful April” and has been our most successful month since May - I have therefore pushed my target to reach 1,000 signatures by the middle of 2027 and hope to reach 600 signatures by the end of the year. Regardless of how many UK or international signatures I end up with by the end of the year, this will go down in history as one of the most notable and unusual change.org campaigns of 2026!
Our overall campaign progress:
Phase One (27th February-2nd August 2026)
100 signatures – March 25th (earliest Easter Western Christians born after 2008 will see without petitions/campaigns)
200 signatures – April 13th (Orthodox Easter Monday)
300 signatures – May 9th (latest possible date for Orthodox Easter Monday in the 20th/21stCenturies)
400 signatures – June 18th
423 signatures – July 28th
Phase Two (12th August 2026-present)
424 signatures – August 17th
432 signatures - August 17th
440 signatures – August 22nd
450 signatures – August 24th
460 signatures - August 28th
467 signatures - August 28th
Phase Three (TBC)
Despite a lack of social media, because I requested shares on my previous successful unrelated 1,569-signature petition, the petition was shared on WhatsApp, Nextdoor and Facebook on my behalf so was able to win my cause. It was only luck that my successful previous petition targeted a strictly British cause related to my local area, meaning that I got the right signatures and my petition was able to achieve its goal. My scope was originally set to ‘National’ (later to ‘Global’ to attract more signatures overall) and I eventually got five international signatures from Belarus, Iraq, Germany, India and Bulgaria!
Moreover, because I posted regular updates and my successful petition involved an imminent deadline, I changed my petition’s title to reflect that deadline and other supporters chipped in to promote my cause beside myself and shared on social media. There was also another trending parallel petition fighting for the exact same cause as me so those who rallied behind me truly helped and I was able to declare victory on my petition despite campaigning completely in the dark from my family!
Despite disliking the data on my CSV spreadsheets, I love running my beloved campaign and it has truly saved my life during the spring this year when the rest of society was out of whack with me. I many have lost the signature race to Emma Tucker, but I have certainly won the update (I have over 60 updates on my page whereas Emma Tucker has only 1), with Emma Tucker’s only update being published on March 22nd!
I love reading about my campaign updates on Google’s AI Overview and the AI still doesn’t realise I’m the one asking questions about myself, like asking the AI questions like:
“Did the man who created the earliest Easter date petition on change.org like seeing his CSV spreadsheets?” and
“Did the man who created the earliest Easter date petition on change.org like seeing the wrong date in shops?”
I will post my next update once I hit my last “stepping stone” milestone at 486 before 500, though will not post an update when I hit 500 signatures because the platform does so automatically. I also chipped in to help the 9th grade NYC Orthodox student whose May 2026 campaign titled “Orthodox Students deserve Orthodox Holidays”, got brutally stuck at 153 signatures for two months solid and I use change.org to sign other people’s petitions too.
With this campaign’s quinary goal, I decided to launch a spinoff petition directly to educate the British public about twilight and the front page uses an image of the message “UK RESIDENTS, THE UK NEVER HAS TRUE DARKNESS IN JUNE” to shock any UK user browsing the site into learning about the hidden twilight and signing. Because I set the petition’s scope to ‘Local’ and not ‘National’ or ‘Global’, I was able to instantly reach and clear the 5-signature visibility mark and the aim of the petition is to educate the UK public the truth about our summer nights, the direct petition link is here https://www.change.org/p/petition-to-educate-the-uk-public-on-all-night-twilight-near-the-summer-solstice
UK supporters, please keep signing and providing international support for this US petition, as the lack of Orthodox holiday recognition is absolutely not unique to the US - https://www.change.org/p/orthodox-students-deserve-orthodox-holidays
Ro____ Miles Ash_____!