Ukrainians Look Forward to a New Christmas

June 21, 2023212 views0

Ukrainians Look Forward to a New Christmas

2023-06-21T10:38:35+01:00

By Marie

Ukrainians look forward to a new Christmas nearly five years after the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was recognized as independent from the Russian Orthodox Church by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.The OCU has further cemented its split from its Russian counterpart by adopting a new liturgical calendar.“This is a decision that the majority of the faithful of our Church and the majority of Ukrainian society are waiting for from us,” the OCU said on its official Facebook page in late May, after its assembled bishops voted for the change.The decision still needs to be approved by the church’s ruling council in July, but it is expected to pass. The calendar shift is then slated to go into effect on Sept. 1 of this year.The most palpable impact will be that millions of Ukrainians will celebrate Christmas with the Western world on Dec. 25, instead of the day two weeks later when Russian and other Eastern Orthodox churches, following the Julian calendar, mark Christ’s birth.Westerners adopted the Gregorian calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XII in the 16th century.It’s not the first time an Orthodox church has shifted calendars; in fact, it’s almost exactly a century after a synod in Istanbul, known as the Council of Constantinople, voted for a similar change, which was adopted in 1924 by churches across Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, Romania and elsewhere in the Balkans.In its statement, the church described its decision to shift to using “the living Ukrainian language in worship instead of the traditional Slavic one” as a desire for the newly independent church to replace “centuries-old subordination.”The “centuries-old subordination” refers to the 16th-century move to put Orthodox faithful in what is modern Ukraine under the purview of the Patriarchate of Moscow.ALSO READ: Hundreds Gather at Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer Site