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There are a couple more wrinkles to the Eastern Orthodox calendar here, and I only half understand them. One is that there's a third calendar involved called the Revised Julian Calendar, which was adopted by many Orthodox in about 1923. It's used by the Orthodox Church in America, among others. For the most part, it brings them into sync with the Gregorian Calendar so they both agree on when a given date occurs (no more 10 or 13 day differential), and it keeps the Spring Equinox on March 21. But they also calculate Easter according to the 325A.D. method, same as the Old Calendarists, so that all Orthodox still celebrate Easter on the same day, along with the movable feasts that are based on N days or Sundays before or after Easter. Now with regard to Christmas in particular, this feast used to be combined with Theophany ("Epiphany" in the West?), which falls on January 6 and is all about Christ's baptism. In both feasts, Christ is revealed to the world, first simply by being born into it, in the second through the voice from Heaven and the blessing of the Holy Spirit acknowledging who He is, and also revealing God as three persons, since all three are present in that scene. At any rate, the date of Theophany on one calendar comes pretty close to the date of Christmas on the other; I suspect the time between them might be the famous "12 days of Christmas" though I'm not sure; guess I need to research this better. Also with regard to Advent, the Orthodox observe a 40 day fast, sometimes called "Winter Lent", leading up to Christmas, or the Feast of the Nativity. It's not as strict as Great Lent which leads up to Easter, and exact fasting guidelines vary between jurisdictions. --Wesley |
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