The War on (Orthodox) Christmas

A perennial feature of the so-called “culture wars” in the US political theatre is the idea of a “War on Christmas”, where many American Christians have lamented what they see as the ever-increasing societal secularization, commercialization, and commodification of Christmas, leading them to ask the question “where is the ‘Christ’ in Christmas” in the modern day.

In Russia and still in many other Eastern Orthodox countries, this isn’t a problem. There has long been a divide between a secular “New Year’s” and a more religious Christmas.

New Year’s festivities are also held on December 31st with family gatherings and/or more raucous parties with copious alcohol consumed, as in the West, but also gifts are exchanged, and many of the “traditional trappings” of Christmas in the West are enjoyed on New Year’s Eve instead - such as the Christmas Tree, Mistletoe and Yule Log etc, that were historically coopted from earlier pagan mid-winter holidays such as the Germanic Yuletide or the Roman Saturnalia festival.

Meanwhile, Orthodox Christmas, which is traditionally celebrated on January 7th, following the old Julian calendar, is comparatively a much more sober and religious occasion. Russian Christmas is ALL about the “birth of Christ”.

To my mind – this is a useful and common-sense division of the 2 holidays purposes and duties that avoids the religious, cultural and political controversies surrounding Christmas in the West.

But there has been a long move since Orthodox Christian countries have been one by one absorbed into the modern “collective West” to change the date on which Christmas in celebrated to the Gregorian Calendar established by the Catholic Pope Gregory in the 16th century – December 25th.
But of course, the more secular, pagan, and commercial aspects contaminating and conflating Western Christmas have gradually bled in with the calendar date change.

This Westernization of Orthodox Christmas has happened over the decades to Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Moldova – and now it’s happening to Ukraine.

The new schismatic Orthodox of Church of Ukraine, actively pushed by the US-backed Putsch regime in Kiev and manufactured just in 2018 has for the first time declared that churches under their control can “choose” to celebrate Christmas on either the Western December 25th or the traditional Orthodox January 7th.

This blatant weaponization of the new schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the holidays is openly being done as part of a geopolitical project and real culture war to gradually “De-Russify” and “Westernize” Christmas (along with everything else) in Ukraine.
This makes clear that the newly manufactured church is a political and ideological institution of the putsch regime, not a religious one.

[Ukrainian children being taught Christmas Carol’s about killing Russians:
https://odysee.com/@Velyaminov:a/Stupid-Ukrainian-children-sing-about-Muskovites:3]

The church’s spokesperson, archbishop Yevstratiy Zoria, said data would be collected to see how many worshippers attended Christmas services on December 25th and how many on January 7th.
The traditional January 7th Orthodox celebration date of Christmas will of course eventually be demonized, phased out, and banned.

The Westernization of Ukrainian Christmas will be complete and all the conflation and controversies surrounding it will come with.
And in my humble opinion, the Ukrainian Christian Orthodox faithful will be the one’s all the more spiritually and culturally poorer for it.