Orthodox Christmas 2025: Last year, in the last month of 2024, on 25 December, people of the Christian community all over the world celebrated the festival of Christmas, but today on 7 January, Christmas is being celebrated in the Orthodox name in Russia. It is known as Orthodox Christmas in Hindi language. Let us know information about this special Christmas…
The Christian community here first followed the calendar adopted by the Roman emperor Julius Caesar in 46 BC. The mathematics of this calendar is giving different importance. According to it, a year is the time it takes for the Sun to revolve around the Earth. Normally the calendar overestimated the solar year by 11 minutes. Over time, the Julian calendar and the solar year became out of sync. Furthermore, in astronomy, Pope Gregory created the Gregorian calendar in 1582 to correct some of the mistakes of the Julian calendar.
Most of the Christian world adopted the Gregorian calendar, and Great Britain adopted it in 1752. Gradually, the secular world also adopted Pope Gregory's calendar. Here, with the changing calendar, the dates of Christmas also changed. By 1923, there was a 13-day difference between the two calendars, causing Orthodox Christmas to fall 13 days after December 25. Therefore, people in some Eastern Orthodox churches, including Russia's largest church, celebrate Christmas on January 7.
Orthodox Christmas Traditions (Hundred.Social Media)
Here, the Orthodox Christmas celebrated on January 7 has the same characteristics and traditions as the Christmas celebrated on December 25. Here on January 7, according to tradition, followers of the Orthodox Church fast for 40 days before Christmas and stay away from meat. After Christmas Eve on January 6, they hold a huge feast to celebrate the last day of their fast.
12 traditional dishes are served during this big feast. Some dishes include cabbage soup, baked apples, vegetable stew and bread. Some groups engage in caroling, decorating houses with sheaves of wheat and Serbian churches burn an oak branch or a young oak tree to accompany the announcement of the birth of Christ.
Here, Orthodox Christmas was earlier celebrated in Ukraine on January 7, but after the war between Ukraine and Russia, new changes were made. As of 2023, Ukraine did not celebrate Christmas on January 7 for the first time in more than a century. In July 2023, the Ukrainian government passed a law changing the date of celebrating Christmas in the country from January 7 to December 25. The law, also signed by President Volodymyr Zelensky, states that Ukrainians “want to live their lives with their own traditions and holidays.”
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This type of change has been made in recent years in Ukraine, where the newly created Orthodox Church has also changed its Christmas date to December 25. That being said, as the split between the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar continues to grow, the Orthodox Church in Russia will have to start celebrating Christmas on January 8 in approximately every 75 years.
