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Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas
With traditions that date more than a thousand years, Orthodox Christmas has arrived. (Valley News Dispatch)
By Larry Seben
For the Valley News Dispatch
Saturday, January 7, 2006
Details Why some celebrate Christmas today
The Julian Calendar was introduced in 46 B.C. by Julius Caesar in an effort to bring uniformity to the process of counting days, months and years throughout the sprawling Roman Empire.
Although it was an improvement over the former Roman Calendar -- which was difficult to follow since it was reset with the reign of every new Emperor -- the Julian Calendar still contains an error of one day every 128 years, meaning the day for Christmas will continue to drift.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced what became known as the Gregorian Calendar. In predominantly Catholic countries, such as Italy and Spain, the Gregorian calendar gained relatively quick acceptance. For non-Catholic nations, such as Britain and its empire, acceptance of a Catholic invention would not take place until 1752.
And in Eastern Europe, with its close ties to the Orthodox Church, acceptance of the Gregorian Calendar took even longer. Russia, for example, continued to use the Julian system until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The last European country to adopt the Gregorian Calendar was Greece in 1923.
While countries may have adopted the Gregorian system, none of the eastern national churches adopted it. Instead, many of them adopted a revised Julian Calendar, which dropped 13 days in 1923, and kept the Julian and Gregorian leap years in synch until 2800.
These so called New Calendarists include the Orthodox churches of Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, all of which celebrate the nativity on Dec. 25.
The Old Calendarists, including the Orthodox churches of Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and Jerusalem, continue to use the old Julian calendar, which has Dec. 25 falling on the Gregorian Calendar's Jan. 7 -- that is, until the year 2100, when it will drift a day further to Jan. 8.
With traditions that date more than a thousand years, Orthodox Christmas has arrived.
According to the Julian calendar, today is Christmas Day, and millions of Orthodox Christians across the country and the world will gather to celebrate at homes and churches. Last evening, parishioners gathered at Holy Virgin Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Arnold to observe Christmas Eve with a worship service followed by a traditional supper.
The service, called the Grand Compline, is steeped in tradition. It combines a series of prayers and readings from the Old and New Testaments that center around the foretelling of, and the announcement of, the birth of Christ.
Following the service was the Holy Supper -- the Sviata Vechera -- served in the parish hall.
"It is a meatless dinner with traditional foods," said parishioner Richard Zack of Lower Burrell.
Included in the feast are Ukrainian favorites including kutya (a wheat, honey and poppyseed dish), pidpenky (made of mushrooms), pirohi (more commonly known by their Polish name, pirogi), holubtski (cabbages stuffed with buckwheat), borsch, pickled herring and a variety of potato and sauerkraut dishes.
For the 80-year-old Holy Virgin parish, maintaining the traditional Ukrainian service and supper is no small accomplishment.
"People work very hard to keep the tradition alive," Zack said. "The parish is small, with probably only about 20 families, and some of those are one-person families, widows and widowers."
"We are lucky the parish is still open," said Walter Sakal of Arnold, a lifelong member and the parish choir director.
The first Ukrainians came to the Pittsburgh area in the 1890s, supplying the local mills and mines with cheap labor. Since then there have been several waves of Ukrainian immigration, including one that dates from 1991 to the present.
Included in this most recent wave was the Very Reverend Stefan Cencuch, the spiritual leader of Holy Virgin. Cencuch fled Communist persecution in what formerly was Czechoslovakia.
"I was a dissident and escaped over 20 years ago," said Cencuch, who also serves St. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Lyndora, Butler County. "It is such a joy to live here."
While there have been immigrants, the declining number of parishioners in traditional ethnic churches, such as Holy Virgin, do not necessarily reflect that because of several factors.
"Part of the problem is intermarriage," Zack said. "It is very difficult when you have young children not to recognize Dec. 25 as Christmas."
Even among Orthodox Christians, there has been a shift to celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25.
While most Russian, Serbian, Georgian and Ukrainian churches still adhere to the old Julian calendar, many others, including Greek and Romanian Orthodox followers, have switched to the more recognized Dec. 25.
Today, when to celebrate is almost decided by individual churches.
For the Rev. Cencuch, that has meant two Christmas celebrations because his Lyndora parish opted to celebrate on Dec. 25.
While Holy Virgin's numbers may be small, the Ukrainian Orthodox tradition of when to celebrate the nativity runs deep, stemming back to 988 when King Volodymir (Vladimir) introduced Christianity to the Ukraine.
