Will Christmas and New Year coincide?

Andrey Kurayev. Photo: RIA Novosti

Milena Faustova
Moscow Times
12/1/2012

Archdeacon Andrey Kurayev of the Russian Orthodox Church suggests celebrating Christmas and the New Year on one day, the 1st of January. The superposing of the dates and celebrations would be the answer to many questions asked by Christians belonging to different churches and would mark the beginning of both the religious and secular year, the Russian priest said in his interview for The Voice of Russia:

“The main point is to avoid perplexity about why the year which is counted from Christ’s birth begins on a date which differs from the date of His birth. There is a gap between these dates in either of the currently existing calendars. The West uses the Gregorian calendar and marks Christmas on the 25th of December, after which the old year lasts for another week. According to the old Julian calendar, Christmas is the 7th of January, which means that the year begins a week before Christ’s birth. I am sure that both calendars should be combined. It would be logical to begin the year and the epoch on the day following Christmas.”

There is no denying that the Professor of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy sounds convincing. The more so, that none of the four Gospels gives the exact date of Christ’s birth. All of them only mention the season, the Jewish month of Kislev which corresponds to November or December in the European calendar. For the first Christians the main event was Easter, the day when Christ came back to life, so they counted their year from that date. The decision to mark Christ’s birthday on the 25th of December was taken only in the 5th century. 11 centuries later, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new, Gregorian calendar, after which two dates became celebrated as Christ’s birthdays. Western Christians and some Orthodox Churches continued to celebrate Christmas at the end of December, while the Russian, Serbian and some other Orthodox Churches moved this event to the beginning of January. In the 20th century the gap between the Julian and Gregorian calendars was 13 days.

Andrey Kurayev believes that now is the right time to start a discussion about this illogical situation. His opponents’ main arguments are that moving Christmas would entail moving the Annunciation which is celebrated 9 months before Christmas. Archdeacon Kurayev has an answer to this:

“Moving the dates one week are not a great deal. After all, any doctor and any mother will tell you that nine months are always an approximate period of pregnancy. I am sure that if people ask why the Annunciation and Christmas are not exactly nine months apart, it will be easier to answer that question than to explain why there are two dates of Christmas and they both differ from the beginning of the year.”

So far, Andrey Kurayev’s suggestion has not been supported either by Orthodox Christians or other Christian Churches. Expert in religious issues Alexey Yudin considers this to be Father Andrey’s New Year joke:

“This is an absolutely unrealistic suggestion. Even though it was chosen at random, the date of Christ’s birth is so deeply rooted in the church tradition and Christians’ minds all over the world that it is impossible to change it in any way now.”

Alexey Yudin is convinced that a global reform of the calendar could bring all Christian and secular celebrations to unanimity. However, the world community will hardly agree to this innovation.

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