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Church Calendar and |
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Question: Christmas, the most popular of the "moveable" feast days, was celebrated on December 25th for many generations. In 1918 the Bolshevik government changed the calendar (skipped from January 31, 1918 to February 14, 1918), but the local church did not, meaning that the Feast of the Nativity of Jesus Christ was now celebrated 13 days later (according to mathematical calculation), on January 7th. Many, perhaps most, Ukrainians in Canada wouldn’t dare change dates today for fear of losing their "Ukrainian Christmas" traditions, unaware that firstly, Liturgically, Christmas is still celebrated on December 25th (Julian or Old Style Calendar) and secondly, January 7th was never Christmas, Ukrainian or other. (However many "younger" Ukainians observe both dates.) I have always wondered about Ukrainians’ reaction during the period of changing of the civil calendar from Julian to Gregorian. Also, how is it that Ukrainians from western Ukraine also celebrate Christmas on the 7th when their Polish and Austrian/Hungarian occupiers switched in the 16th century? Ukrainian history being fragmented, does it mean that western Ukrainians opposed to the usage of the Gregorian calendar much sooner than their eastern brethren? I gather that the Roman Catholic Poles did not force the Uniates (Ukrainian Greek-Catholics) to follow the Gregorian calendar. |
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Very Rev. Ihor Kutash kutash@unicorne.org It seems to me that celebrating according to one or another calendar ought never to be a matter of coercion - of "daring" or "not daring" to. Just as one's faith or lack thereof. Faith and celebration of one's faith is always a matter of one's choosing - or it is not what faith is commonly held to be. I believe that Western Ukrainians held on to their Julian Calendar - as do many Ukrainians now living outside of Ukraine - as a matter of *choice*, as a way of preserving their identity as Catholics of the *Byzantine* rite, or as is the case with myself as a way of preserving my identity as an Orthodox Christian of the *Ukrainian* community. Those of us who choose to do so do not feel - or I for one do not - that we are in this way separated from the great number of Christians who make use of the astronomically more accurate Gregorian Calendar. Christ's family has always celebrated its unity in diversity. There are of course those who have made it a matter of dogma, i.e. saying that those who celebrate according to the Gregorian Calendar are not celebrating correctly. But then they simply make the calendar question a part of the package of "innovations" which compose the "modernist heresy". There are those who insist that to be ritually correct we should all celebrate according to the Gregorian calendar. They say that because we go through the Gregorian Christmas - and partake in various degrees of the festivities marked by other Christians - when we get to the Julian Christmas we have broken the fast and lost our focus so that Christmas is somehow no longer Christmas for us. There is certainly some logic in this argument. However Eastern Christians, although honouring logic and endeavouring to speak words appropriate to God, do not make this the decisive factor in their faith. We cheerfully celebrate with others as fully as our consciences allow, and then celebrate *our* Christmas, when it comes, with joy and thanksgiving. A joyous Christmas to you and yours! And to everyone whenever they celebrate! May God grant that the sweet Christ-child may be born in our *hearts* each and every day of the year!
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