Which Christmas?

Edna overseeing crafts

Today we had church at the Invalid Center again. It’s the same place where we have English Club on Wednesdays. We had a great time with the children and have started teaching them some of the Ukrainian worship songs we got from Calvary Chapel Kyiv. Ukrainian children love to sing and it wasn’t long before they were singing better than us. We are working on putting together some kind of performance for Christmas. This is where the confusion began. We weren’t sure which Christmas to celebrate.

In the 17th century most European countries adopted the Gregorian calendar, but Russia (later to become the Soviet Union) used the Julian calendar until 1918. Most holidays are thus celebrated 13 days later according to Orthodox tradition. We assumed that our church would celebrate Christmas on January 7th and had made plans to be in Chernihiv on December 25th. We found out tonight that Western Ukraine and most people here in Bila Tserkva celebrate Christmas on December 25th. It was decided that since we would be out of town then that the church would instead celebrate Christmas on January 7th so that we would be here to put on a children’s performance. We’re happy, but still a little surprised that we can choose which Christmas to celebrate.

You can check out how our Thanksgiving went by going to Danny Foote’s blog. (Why blog when someone already has and has done a much better job. Thanks Danny. )