Christmas in the middle of war brings the Ukrainian Orthodox Church closer to the West

Olha and her family will celebrate Christmas twice this year.

For the first time, and blackouts permitting, he will cook Kutia—a typical boiled wheat pudding with poppy seeds and honey—also on December 25.

The day has been an official holiday in Ukraine for a few years now, but it is not officially Christmas.

With a large majority of the believing citizenry faithful to the Orthodox Church and a tradition that follows the Julian calendar, Ukraine traditionally celebrates the birth of Jesus on January 7.

Now, under the enormous shadow of Russia's war in Ukraine, not a few families, like Olha's, have decided to also commemorate the 25th to get closer to the traditions of most Western countries.

The war has ripped from Ukraine a good piece of the Christmas atmosphere that other years imbued the streets.

Yet even though it's all war, there are bits of tinsel, little lights, and little bells here and there.

In Dnipro, some lights and decorations in shops and department stores remind that it is Christmas.

In kyiv, the capital, there is not the traditional Christmas market but there is a big tree.

In Ivano-Frankivsk, in the west of the country, for now they have replaced the huge illuminated fir tree with a tent in which those who pass through the large square can charge their mobile phones and warm up a bit.

The Orthodox Church of Ukraine has approved for the first time this year that its congregations celebrate Christmas ceremonies on the 25th, another step on the path that some voices claim to move away from the Moscow Patriarchate and other cultural traditions and symbols that they consider marked by Russia .

However, the Church has established that, at least for now, this new December celebration is additional;

not in substitution of January 7th.

That is, there would be Christmas twice.

Despite this concession, since before the invasion a third of the faithful of the Church of Ukraine were in favor of transferring the celebration of Christmas to the Gregorian calendar, which marks the date of the birth of Jesus on December 25, the majority of Ukrainian citizens - especially the elderly - prefer to follow tradition.

“We cannot change the dates overnight,” says Father Ivan, who leads a Ukrainian Orthodox church in Kramatorsk, in Donbas, in the battered east of the country.

"Has no sense.

It's like celebrating the New Year in February”, remarks the priest.

After the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks adopted a Gregorian calendar instead of the Julian for civil purposes, but the Moscow Patriarchate continued as before.

His parish, the largest in that city in the Donetsk region and the largest in the surrounding area, belongs to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which split from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate in January 2019. Another step forward for move away from Russia and the leadership of Moscow, which even before the large-scale war that has completed ten months maintained iron support for the Kremlin and warmongering rhetoric.

The Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill, who various Western intelligence reports have associated with the KGB (Soviet espionage), has defended and blessed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has ensured that the Kremlin soldiers who die in it will clean up all their sins, igniting even more, if possible, the split spirits in Ukraine.

A Ukrainian woman and girl decorate a Christmas tree in kyiv, on December 23, 2022. SERGEY DOLZHENKO (EFE)

Outside the Kramatorsk church it is pitch black.

The Kremlin's attacks against the Ukrainian energy and civil infrastructure to try to break the resistance of its population after more than 300 days of war, have left the city almost dark and frozen in the dead of winter.

Inside, a few candles and a generator that allows—"saving as much as possible," says Father Iván—to continue celebrating the Eucharist.

The priest does not believe that it is necessary to change the date of the traditional Christmas to follow the path that takes them away from Moscow.

“This is our tradition,” he points out.

In Dnipro, power outages have left Dmitri and his family without power for days.

His son-in-law just got a small generator, so they plan to celebrate.

It has cost them more than 1,000 euros.

“We celebrate more for the generator than anything else really,” Dmitri says with a shrug.

He is 78 years old and for him Christmas is January 7th.

It is the date that his family has celebrated for years.

He says that even during the communist dictatorship, when the authorities controlled that he not go to church, his parents, his grandparents and his brothers sang Christmas songs (

) at home.

Sisters Svetlana and Victoria gave gifts to their children on December 19, the feast of Saint Nicholas —the archbishop whose figure inspired Santa Claus— and the day gifts are traditionally delivered in Ukraine (some also on December 31). .

On the 25th they will have a family meal, they say they want to establish a "new tradition", but they reserve the best for January.

“Even if we have to cook in the street and dine by candlelight again, the date is important.

It cannot be that they also steal Christmas from us”, says Victoria.

Despite the war, those days will be all about singing with the children and eating.

budding counteroffensive

These are the toughest parties in decades for Ukraine, with heavy and bloody fighting in the East and a looming counter-offensive in the South, the bombing of the Kremlin, with swarms of Iranian bombing drones attacking infrastructure, with broken families, thousands of dead and many others missing.

And with no end in sight to the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched on February 24.

The debate about when to celebrate Christmas and which calendar to stick to is not new in Ukraine.

That year, the leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has left each congregation to decide whether to have an extra ceremony this December 25, although since this year is a Sunday, there was already a ceremony in all the churches.

Now they are studying to make a broader reform of the dates for future years.

The Ministry of Culture of Ukraine has already launched a survey of citizens on the date of Christmas.

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