#6 - JRL 9008 - JRL Home
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2005
From: Stephen Dalziel <spcdalziel@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS

RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS: AN OUTDATED POLITICAL ANOMALY
By Stephen Dalziel

As the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas according to the Julian Calendar, it seems a good time to pose the question: why? When most of the nominally Christian world has celebrated the birth of Christ, rung in a new year and is well back to business, why does the Russian Church insist that the day which for most people is 7 January is really 25 December?

The answer is banal, and has nothing to do with theology. One of the first acts of national significance which the Bolsheviks carried out after the October (old style) Revolution which took place in November (new style) 1917 came in early 1918: they decided that life would be simpler if the new Russia lived according to the calendar used by most of the world. This would also help them to drag Russia into the twentieth century.

The Church hierarchy was already aware of the dangers posed to religion by the atheistic beliefs of the Bolsheviks. And they decided that sticking to the old calendar was one small way in which they could assert some independence. So the decision to retain the Julian Calendar, and thus celebrate Christmas on the day which for most of the world is 7 January was a purely political one.

For some years now – and certainly since religion became accepted once again in post-Soviet Russia – Russians who deal with the West have suggested that the country should come in line with the majority and move Christmas to 25 December. Unfortunately, the present hierarchy in the Orthodox Church is, on the whole, opposed to anything which they see as a threat to the “Russianness” of the Orthodox Church. Indeed, it could be suggested that the Church hierarchy is opposed to any form of change, however logical it may seem to outsiders.

Unfortunately, the chances that the Church might be persuaded to consider moving Christmas seem to have been dealt a serious blow by the poorly thought-out but swiftly taken decision by the Duma to declare the first ten days of January public holidays. This extraordinary move may have been welcomed by deputies and others wealthy enough to be able to take a ten-day skiing holiday in the middle of winter; but it does little for the majority of Russians, nor for Russia’s standing in the international business community.

Most Russians I have spoken to about the new holidays say that they would far prefer to have a ten-break in the summer, when they could use the time productively at their dachas. Why not, many suggested, take off the first ten days of May, when there are already two holidays (May Day and Victory Day)? Looking from the West, the ten-day January break really does appear to be Russia thumbing its nose to the West. Most of the business world takes off the period from 24 December to 2 January. So just as the world’s getting back to work…Russia stops.

This takes Russian businesses out of the loop for the best part of three weeks – another example, as if one were needed, to show that Russia cares less and less about what the rest of the world thinks of it. A lead could have been given by the Orthodox Church. But the chances of that organisation revising its political decision of 1918 now seem more remote than ever.

Stephen Dalziel is Associate Manager for the Public Affairs and Strategic Communications Agency, APCO. E-mail: sdalziel@apcouk.com.