Russia is the European state where the winter vacations last more for their citizens. In the west we celebrate the Christian nativity and the end of the year. In Russia they celebrate the Catholic and the orthodoxies Christmas. So they may start celebrating the 24th of December and end at the end of January. And the people happy.
In 1700 new year Peter the great introduced a few new customs. The first one was adopting the Gregorian calendar. The new year shall enter the 1st of January. Nobody said anything against and celebrated the new festivity. And the Orthodox community celebrated the orthodox Christmas.
At the beginning of XX century the western calendar substituted the Gregorian and orthodoxies calendar. We can see it on the October revolution. For the revolutionaries it was the 25th of October 1917. For the west it was November 1917, “12 days later”. Formally since then the Russian governments accepted the universally accepted calendar, relegating the Gregorian to the religious celebrating.
Orthodox Christmas starts by the 7th of January and endures a week or so. So nowadays Russians, as every Christian community in the world, celebrates the 24th of December, the end of the formal year, the 6th of January… and then their own Christmas. Anyway, they, orthodoxies, are cismatics, but for more vacations we all are one.
Because of that one day of the middle January is the day of entering in the new year of the Gregorian calendar. In the new year in the old calendar. So, in the new old year. As Bonnie M sung on his singing “Rasputin”: “Those Russians!”.
Write a comment