Everywhere in Europe, rituals to mark the winter solstice have long been focused on the Christian narrative of the birth of Jesus. Yet in the ancient Julian calendar, which has gradually been falling out of synch with the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, Christmas Day now falls on January 7, over two weeks later.
A reformed calendar was first disseminated in 1582 on the authority of Pope Gregory XIII. While most of Europe has come to recognise the Gregorian calendar for both religious and civil purposes, a number of eastern Slavic churches – both Orthodox and Catholic – have retained the Julian calendar in their liturgical life.
Given the deeply embedded sacred character of church rituals, passing a law that brings Christmas forwards is a brave intervention on the part of secular authorities. Yet this is what Ukraine’s president, Volodymr Zelensky, has recently done. The legislation, signed in May 2023, is without precedent since the era when the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Stalin sought to abolish Christmas altogether.
