|
What really is Russian Orthodox and why is Christmas celebrated in January?
by Oscar Entrambasaguas
In order not to bore my readers with theological semantics and because my knowledge in this area is not what may be called profound, here comes a short and easy-to-read summary.
When Christianity first reached Russia it was originally a Metropolitanate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. After Constantinople had fallen under the Turkish rule the Patriarchate was moved to Greece. After a while the Greek Patriarchate and the Roman church started to have disagreements. That resulted in a new Orthodox church in Greece being established. In effect, that meant that the Russian church also became Orthodox (which by the way means the right teaching).
After some time the Russian priests got tired of being under the Greek supervision so they founded the Russian Orthodox Church. When this happened, Russia’s capital was Kiev so the Russian Patriarchate was based there.
Many centuries later, when Moscow became the center of Russia, the Patriarchate was moved there.
As for now, there is no Ukrainian Orthodox Church as all Russian Orthodox still follow the Patriarchate in Moscow (there is NOT a Latvian Orthodox Church as Seinfeld may have you believe either).
This brings us to Christmas. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church think that the other party made a mistake calculating the days after Christ’s birth. There is a difference of 13 days. And since Russia was a pronounced Orthodox country until 1917 their calendar was 13 days behind the rest of the world. Did you ever wonder why Russian October revolution is celebrated in November? The reason for that is that the revolution took place on October 25th according to the Russian calendar and November 7th according to the Western calendar. Russia changed its calendar only in 1918.
So if you want to celebrate Christmas in Russia or Ukraine, add 13 days to your calendar and you will be sure not to miss it!
I will be late...
| 
