486 signatures - I strongly oppose a permanently unified global Easter date!

We have arrived at our last pit stop before clearing the 500-signature milestone that I have been dying to reach, and being stuck at 396, 398, 409, 411 and 422 signatures during active promotion feels like a distant memory. We are now well ahead of the other Birmingham bin strike petition titled “The Prime Minister to Act in the Birmingham Bin Dispute” and the gap has really closed up between this petition and Emma Tucker’s bin strike petition (which was exactly 77 signatures ahead of me when it hit its 500-signature milestone on Monday 17th August). Despite losing the ‘signature race’, we have amassed far more signatures than Emma Tucker’s bin strike petition since it hit 500 signatures so we are coming up behind the rear!

Once we clear 500 signatures, I can officially reopen my 241-signature local petition for new signatures (which has a target of reaching 250 by late October and has remained closed for a hiatus since Monday 17th August after briefly reopening five days earlier). New Year’s Eve is now the deadline to hit 600 signatures and I have pushed forward my 1,000 signature deadline to 30th June 2027.

This will become only my second campaign to EVER hit the 500-signature mark, with my successful 1,569-signature petition hitting that milestone way back in April 2024. Less than a month ago, reaching that milestone felt like an impossible dream so we are, once again, moving at ‘express train speed’ after that we experienced throughout March, April and May after being derailed around the 400 mark. 

After reaching 500, our next target is 514 signatures to match the total of another Orthodox petition titled “Establish Eastern Orthodox Good Friday as a Public Holiday for Manhasset Schools“, then our target will be 551 signatures to match the signature count of a petition titled “Include Orthodox Good Friday in NY School Holidays”.

I strongly oppose a permanently unified global Easter date and would actively launch a change.org petition to campaign against it because I want the Orthodox Church to continue using the Julian Calendar!

There are a few Orthodox holidays in the 500 to 1,000 signature range which I hope to beat, including “School Off on Orthodox Christmas” at 795 signatures and “Orthodox Christmas Day Off” at 921 signatures.

As a regular change.org user, a lot of petitions stall right in the 250 to 500 signature range, so clearing 500 will truly be meaningful and this is a campaign, not a petition. The “Recognise Orthodox Good Friday as a school holiday” campaign created two days before my own movement has successfully reached 330 signatures, and although I remain dedicated in making sure this campaign reaches its milestones, it is nice to see other holiday recognition campaigns (which I support) gain traction and not get stubbornly stuck like that poor Orthodox student’s NYC campaign that completely stalled at 153 signatures.

The first six months of this campaign (not petition) has been an incredible journey and we have the potential to fill a whole sports arena of supporters and of our dominant UK supporters, we have hit almost every major city in the country, we have supporters in bin strike Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Leeds, Leicester, Stoke-on-Trent, Exeter and Newcastle-upon-Tyne and we have hit all four UK capitals (London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast). The only city in Scotland where we have failed to gain a supporter is Aberdeen. 

All those supporters may support different EFL football teams, so some of the supporters may be home and away and wave to each other in different football arenas! The words ‘stadium’ and ‘arena’ are often used interchangeably, just like the words ‘petition’ and ‘campaign’. The £2,500 I have chipped in to get this petition seen (because I lack social media) has been completely worth it despite this campaign becoming obese with UK traction, as it has helped me validate that for me, March 22nd 2026 really was Easter Sunday.

My lack of international traction is absolutely not my fault, its change.org’s fault, as I am actively pushing for my spinoff meta-campaign to reach 100 signatures so we can FORCE THE PLATFORM to stop restricting visibility based on currency used to pay for promotional ads and the user’s IP address. change.org needs to change!

Because I lack social media accounts like X, Facebook and Instagram, I have been forced to rely entirely on change.org’s built-in ‘chip-in’ tool just to get my campaign seen by the general public and over the last six months have chipped in more than £2.5K just to reach this many signatures. 

Campaigning on change.org without social media is HARD WORK, which is the direct reason it has taken me six gruelling months just to reach 500 signatures, whereas lucky campaigners with social media can easily reach that milestone within days, this is why I have had to spend so much money campaigning and even during the peak ‘viral’ spring months, it took roughly a month to just gain 100 signatures, as this timeline shows below:

• 100 signatures – March 25th
• 200 signatures – April 13th
• 300 signatures – May 9th
• 400 signatures – June 18th

Despite the financial toll, you all (my UK supporters) truly helped my during a difficult time in my life with seeing “Easter on the wrong date” everywhere. 

I am not angry with you at all, my UK supporters, for signing this campaign because you have truly helped, instead I am angry with how the change.org platform handled and sabotaged my campaign by largely restricting it only to UK users while greedily accepting and taking my promotional ‘chip-in’ money (with me myself paying for international reach).

Because I manage multiple petitions on the platform, I close them because if I leave them inactive for too long, change.org will automatically close them. Most of my side projects are closed because I’m currently not focused on them.

In my spinoff meta-petition which has reached 58 signatures, I am also campaigning for honesty and for change.org should come clean and publicly admit to its use of national IP address filtering, which has trapped this campaign within British borders (defeating the purpose of this campaign’s core titular goal). Unless I get the international traction I so desperately need, this campaign will fail!

I will not post an update upon clearing the 500-signature mark as the platform will do that automatically and because I campaign completely independently from my family, there are completely oblivious to the fact I am the mastermind behind this nearly 500-signature petition with supporters scattered around Britain despite knowing how stressful April 2026 was for me. 

Phase Two has been an absolute success, and I am confident that "500 day" will occur some time this week!

Ro____ Miles Ash_____ (Mr Easter)