by The Christmas lights came on ahead of schedule. The families sang Christmas carols a little before. And the first gifts of the season, traditionally hidden under a pillow or in a boot, arrived two weeks early.
Of Ukraine’s many Western-oriented changes, implemented piecemeal since independence and accelerated during the war, one brought special joy this year: Christmas came early.
After centuries of marking the holiday on January 7 according to the Julian church calendar, this year the Ukrainian Orthodox Church formally moved to celebrating December 25 with most of the rest of Europe, and pointedly not with Russia.
For 6-year-old Drynka, that meant practicing Christmas carols early and enjoying the excitement of receiving gifts like a Rainbow High doll and a painting set two weeks earlier than last year.
“I love christmas!” she said.
His mother, Halyna Shvets, saw a step towards Europe in the Ukrainian church’s decision to change the date from Russian tradition, not only for Christmas celebrations but also for other religious holidays.
“We are very happy,” he said. “Faith in God is a fundamental pillar of our lives. Celebrating Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, is an opportunity for us to gather around this beautiful Ukrainian religious tradition.”
Christmas, like so much else in Ukraine these days, is closely linked to the country’s war with Russia. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has taken the position that the Julian calendar used in the Russian Church has no religious significance and that holidays should be celebrated according to the calendar according to which people live their daily lives. Even before this year’s formal change, some Ukrainian Orthodox believers, in the first year after the Russian invasion, had moved Christmas to December.
Technically the change in celebration is a recommendation; Individual parishes are deciding when to celebrate the holiday. But of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s roughly 7,500 parishes, all but 120 changed the date of Christmas this year, as the Russian invasion approaches its second full year.
Most Eastern Orthodox churches had already adopted this position. After the change of the Ukrainian church, only four of the 15 Eastern Orthodox denominations (in Russia, Serbia, Finland and Jerusalem) still follow the Julian calendar, which is delayed by 13 days due to a difference in the calculation of the length of the year. Some religious communities in Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, known as ancient festivals, have also followed the ancient calendar.
In his Christmas speech, President Volodymyr Zelensky highlighted the second Christmas in war and the change of date for Orthodox and Catholic Ukrainians to celebrate on the same day. “Today all Ukrainians are together,” he said. “We all celebrate Christmas together. On the same date, as a great family, as a nation, as a united country.”
Zelensky said many Ukrainians would celebrate with empty places at the table for soldiers on the front. However, they would all pray together for peace “without a two-week time difference.”
After Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church separated from the Russian Orthodox Church, although much of the liturgy and traditions remained similar. In 2018, that split became formal, although one branch of the church remained aligned with Russia.
After the invasion, that branch removed formal mention of loyalty to the Russian church from church documents, but continues to celebrate Christmas in January.
Church leaders and believers say celebrating the holidays away from Russians is a happy change.
“We see that the Moscow Patriarchate creates myths about the tsar and the Russian world, and people believe them,” said Father Mykhailo Omelian, spokesman for the Ukrainian church. Celebrating apart from the Russians will help differentiate the Ukrainian branch of Orthodoxy, he said.
“This process began in the economic, political, social and cultural sphere and now reaches the spiritual aspect,” he said. “The religious sphere cannot belong to an aggressor country.”
Most Ukrainians will accept the change, Liudmyla Fylypovych, a religion professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, said in an interview. Going from January to December does not alter the meaning of Christmas, she said and added. “We do not celebrate the date but the event” of Jesus’ birth.
Most of the change has gone smoothly, families and church leaders say. The gifts, traditionally hidden in shoes or somewhere in a bedroom on St. Nicholas Day, December 6, delight millions of Ukrainian children.
The rhythm of Christmas carols and presentations of Christmas plays was brought forward two weeks. On Christmas Eve, children wander through villages or up and down the stairs of apartment blocks, singing Christmas carols and receiving small gifts from those who listen, a tradition now carried out on December 24 instead of January 6 .
In another Ukrainian tradition, on Christmas Day, children perform parodies of the Nativity story in the central streets of their city. The practice began earlier this year.
Cities changed the schedules of hundreds of holiday events. In the western city of Lviv, for example, more than 200 Christmas and New Year activities were organized, including street theater skits on Christmas Day, according to the new calendar.
For those observing, a pre-holiday religious fast to abstain from meat was also held earlier this year.
Along the war front lines, about 700 Ukrainian Orthodox Church priests serving as chaplains visited trenches and bunkers to bless troops, said Father Mykhailo, a church spokesman. They will not celebrate Christmas mass in areas near the front, since any gathering of soldiers creates a target for Russian artillery or missiles.
Metropolitan Epiphanius, leader of the Ukrainian church, will offer mass on Monday at Saint Sophia Cathedral in kyiv. He posted his Christmas prayers online, earlier than usual.
“In the midst of the pain and suffering of war, in the midst of the pain of loss, we still celebrate,” he planned to say during Monday’s liturgy, “because Christmas for us is not only or not so much a time of entertainment and gifts as a testimony to the victory of truth and good and the inevitable defeat of evil.”
His speech concluded with the usual words of celebration: “Christ is born!”
There were some glitches in the date change. With less school vacation time before Christmas, preparing the Christmas meal and its main dish (a dish of boiled wheat grains with nuts and dried fruits) is more hectic, Shvets said. But that’s a minor inconvenience, he added.
“We have been waiting for this for many years,” Shvets said.
“We are very happy and grateful,” he said. “It’s wonderful for us that we celebrate with the rest of the world.”
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn contributed with reports.
