PENTECOSTSUNDAY Function (Gnumeric)

• Introduced: Gnumeric 1.9.15. The official 1.9.14-to-1.9.15 source diff adds the Christian-date implementation and registers all five named functions; the release notes identify the new calendar group. No exact release day is inferred from an archive timestamp.
• Documented support: Registered in the Christian Date Functions plugin for Gnumeric 1.12.62. No retirement is established.
• Last functioning version: Unverified; source support does not prove application execution.
• Evidence dates: The 1.12.62 source snapshot was retained October 13–14, 2026. The historical release diff and notes were retrieved October 15; calculations and this full guide were reviewed that day. No native Gnumeric or GUI test was run.

PENTECOSTSUNDAY returns the Gregorian Sunday in the Roman-rite calendar specified by the function help. Its callback adds 49 elapsed days to Easter Sunday, exactly seven weeks. An inclusive day count beginning with Easter as day one is 50; adding 50 elapsed days instead would produce the following Monday.

=PENTECOSTSUNDAY([year])

The single numeric year argument is optional. With an explicit year, the shared helper converts it to an integer and applies Gnumeric’s year adjustment: 0–29 become 2000–2029, while 30–99 become 1930–1999. Thus 29 and 30 differ by nearly a century, not by one year. Use four-digit years for an auditable calendar. Negative integer years and years above 9956 return #NUM!.

The help states a nominal lower bound of 1582, but actual acceptance depends on date conventions and whether negative dates are enabled. The year-adjustment helper can reject years before the workbook’s 1900 or 1904 base. The modern worked years avoid this setting-dependent region. Blank and text coercions are unverified; an omitted argument is a deliberate separate operation.

Create PentecostYears with years 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028 in A2:A6. Fill B2 =PENTECOSTSUNDAY(A2) through B6. Expected dates are May 19, 2024; June 8, 2025; May 24, 2026; May 16, 2027; and June 4, 2028. Fill C2 =B2-EASTERSUNDAY(A2) downward. Every expected difference is 49; dividing it by 7 gives seven weeks. These are calendar calculations, not a public-holiday list.

These ISO dates make the expected calendar result unambiguous. A workbook can display a different localized date format without changing the underlying date. The table does not specify a date-system-dependent serial number.

Create a sequence of weekly milestones from Easter to Pentecost. Put year 2026 in B2 and =EASTERSUNDAY(B2) in B3. In A6:A13 enter week numbers 0 through 7. Fill C6 =$B$3+7*A6 through C13. Expected dates are April 5, 12, 19, 26 and May 3, 10, 17, 24. The final row equals =PENTECOSTSUNDAY(B2). Eight listed Sundays span seven weekly intervals; counting rows is different from counting elapsed weeks.

In a copy, change B2 to 2027. The sequence starts March 28 and ends May 16 while retaining the seven-day gaps. The fixed $B$3 anchor must stay fixed when filling, while A6 changes to A7 and so on. A mistaken fixed $A$6 would repeat the starting Sunday in every row. This provides a clear formula-copy check alongside the calendar calculation.

The no-year helper reads the current system time, derives the calendar year and computes this specific holiday. It advances to next year only when this year’s holiday is strictly before the date being evaluated. Therefore the current holiday date itself is included in “next”; it does not automatically skip to next year on that day.

For a hypothetical evaluation date of 2026-05-23, =PENTECOSTSUNDAY() has reference date 2026-05-24. On 2026-05-24, it still has that date. On 2026-05-25, it changes to 2027-05-16. These are simulated clock inputs to the source rule, not observations of today’s application output. The functions are registered as volatile; actual recalculation timing, timezone handling and saved-workbook caching were not tested.

The result is a Sunday anchor, not Pentecost Monday. Adding one day can be a deliberate separate calendar calculation, but it must be labeled separately and does not establish holiday status. The no-argument form selects the upcoming Pentecost itself, so it may still select the current year after that year’s Easter has passed.

If the output looks like an integer, inspect the cell’s date format before changing the formula. If a year is rejected, inspect the four-digit input and the workbook’s date conventions. Do not repair an unsupported date by silently changing the requested year. The shared implementation includes a correction for negative offsets crossing the fictitious February 29, 1900 serial-date gap; the simple date-offset worksheet identities above are claimed for the stated modern years, not every historical serial boundary.

Check exact function spelling and the Christian Date Functions plugin when resolving availability issues. This guide does not supply a tested plugin-installation workflow. Error displays for malformed expressions, locale-specific entry, external workbook import and extreme serial values are unverified. The explicit-year controls and hypothetical-clock controls serve different purposes and should be kept separate.

• Function-specific help
• Worksheet callback and exact calendar offset
• Shared Easter algorithm and serial conversion
• Gnumeric official function catalogue

EASTERSUNDAY, ASCENSIONTHURSDAY, DATE.