Why do some Christians have a good time Christmas on 7 January?

Across a lot of the Orthodox world, many tens of millions of individuals have a good time Christmas on 7 January. This is the story…

Where Christmas is in December

For most Christians from a Catholic and Protestant tradition, Christmas falls every year on 25 December, where it’s a public holiday across much of the world. However, there are some countries where Christmas Day public holiday falls on 7 January.

Where Christmas is in January

Christmas Day is a public holiday on 7 January in Eastern Europe in Belarus, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Russia, in addition to in Georgia and Kazakhstan. In north-east Africa, it’s on 7 January in Egypt and Ethiopia, and in Armenia it’s 6 January.

These are countries where nearly all of Christians are from the Orthodox tradition. In a few of these countries, all of the Christians follow Orthodox Christmas. For example in Macedonia the Protestants, where there may be a historic sizable Methodist minority, follow Christmas on 7^th January like everyone else.

Christmas in Ukraine

Until 2023, Christmas Day was also marked on 7 January within the Ukraine. However for political and cultural reasons, in the identical 12 months, Ukraine switched celebrating Christmas from 7 January to 25 December, so the phrase ‘Christmas comes but every year’ was not true in Ukraine last 12 months.

Great Schism

The division between eastern and western Christianity is almost a thousand years old. The Christian world broke into Eastern Orthodox Church and Western Catholic spheres on the Great Schism in 1054 AD. This following many centuries of tensions over cultural and theological differences, and different attitudes to authority. However, the Eastern and Western Christian worlds agreed that Christmas Day was on the identical date on 25 December.

The Gregorian Calendar

It was in 1582 that the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Gregory XIII issued a decree, called a papal bull, which reformed the calendar. That 12 months, in lots of Catholic countries, Thursday 4 October was followed by Friday, 15 October, with ten days skipped. Other European countries followed suit in 1582, 1583 or 1584.

The other small change was within the spacing of leap years. The old Julian calendar had a bissextile year every fourth 12 months. However the Gregorian calendar had them in years divisible by 4, aside from those years divisible by 100, unless also they are divisible by 400. Thus years like 1900 and 1800 weren’t leap years however the 12 months 2000 was.

Suspicion of the Pope and Catholicism meant that non-Catholic countries, within the Orthodox east, and the newer Protestant north, were wary of the change. Orthodox Christians don’t recognise the authority of the Pope, and Protestant countries which had had their very own Reformation to free themselves from papal power, weren’t inclined to accomplish that either. For nearly 2 hundred years two different calendars were in use in western Europe.

Actually, the Pope’s reason for changing the calendar were good. Dates of essential Christian holidays had drifted away from the natural calendar. According to custom Easter, which was considered the Church’s most vital festival, should at all times fall across the spring equinox. Problems were occurring doing this with the Julian calendar, since the spring equinox was slowly moving out of synch with the natural 12 months. Pope Gregory XIII convened a gaggle of astronomers and proposed a recent calendar, now often known as the Gregorian calendar, which was named after him. It was successful and today the Gregorian calendar is probably the most internationally used civil calendar.

The Julian Calendar

The Roman calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, and it is called after him and called the Julian calendar. This was a solar calendar, and was based on the work of Egyptian astronomer Sosigenes, due to problems of using the lunar calendar. The problem is that the moon goes through just over twelve cycles, called months, within the time that the earth takes to rotate around the sun, called a 12 months. Sosigenes’ calculations were excellent by the standards of the day, but he overestimated the length of the solar 12 months by about 11 minutes. This became more noticable because the centuries progressed.

Adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by Protestants

Protestants slowly got here to understand that the Gregorian calendar was not a Papal plot in any respect. Over the centuries, the calendar had slowly got out of synch with the seasons, in order that it was unsuitable by ten days by 1582. Denmark and Norway adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1700, but Britain held out until 1752.

When Christmas moved in Britain

Great Britain, Ireland, and the American colonies didn’t adopt the brand new calendar until 1752, but which period the calendar was then out of synch by one more day. That 12 months, Wednesday, 2 September, was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752, and eleven days were dropped. From that point, 7 January was often known as ‘Old Christmas Day’.

Christmas on Foula

One island in Scotland, the isle of Foula within the Shetland Isles, still uses the Julian calendar and holds Christmas in accordance with the Julian calendar, which is 7 January within the Gregorian Calendar. Actually it is kind of convenient because visiting priests who come to have a good time Christmas take some days to get there.

The Orthodox World

Although Catholic countries adopted the Gregorian calendar within the sixteenth century, and Protestant countries were using it by the eighteenth century, Orthodox countries continued to make use of the Julian calendar.

The Russian Empire proceed to make use of the Julian calendar until it was modified to the Gregorian calendar by the communists on 14 February 1918, which is why the ‘October Revolution’ happened on 7 November 1918. The communists were anti-religious, and didn’t endear themselves to the Orthodox Church, which continued to make use of the Julian calendar, whilst the state of Russia itself used the Gregorian calendar. Other countries followed suit and Romania adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1919, Greece and Cyprus in 1923, and Turkey in 1926. When this happened, among the Orthodox Churches also adopted the Gregorian calendar and a few didn’t. So Christmas is on 25 December for the Orthodox in Romania and Greece, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar.

However, the Georgian, Russian, Serbian, Macedonian, Coptic, Ethiopian and Syriac Orthodox Churches still hold Christmas Day in accordance with the Julian calendar, which is 7 January within the Gregorian calendar. In these countries Orthodox Christians use the Gregorian calendar for day by day life, but revert to the Julian calendar for ecclesiastical purposes and the festivals.

Ethiopian calendar

Actually it’s much more complicated in Ethiopia, because there may be a very different calendar with thirteen months. The Ethiopian calendar has twelve lunar months each with thirty days, after which there may be an additional intercalary month at the tip of the 12 months, with 5 or 6 days to get the lunar calendar in synch with the solar calendar. On top of that, the Ethiopian calendar 12 months is seven years behind the western calendar.

One Christmas Day, two calendars

So, it just isn’t that Christmas Day is held on a distinct day. In the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions it’s held on 25 December, it’s just that the Orthodox calendar uses the Julian calendar and 25 December within the Julian calendar, falls on 7 January within the Gregorian calendar. So different Christmas Days aren’t a disagreement about when the birth of Jesus actually happened, as is usually reported, however it is only a matter of which calendar is used. As we do not actually know the actual day that Jesus was born on, it doesn’t matter very much which day is used to recollect it.