But after Vladimir Putin invaded in February, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is allowing its congregations to celebrate Christmas on December 25 for the first time, in a move away from Russia and westward. The issue of when Christmas will be celebrated has been a matter of long-standing debate in Ukraine. The church traditionally celebrates Christmas on January 7, at the same time as the Moscow Patriarchate, which blessed Putin’s war. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, is a prominent supporter of Putin and has said that Russian soldiers who are killed will be cleansed of all their sins. In 2017, December 25 became an official holiday in Ukraine. The country’s Orthodox Church had previously allowed prayers to be said on the date. At a meeting of its synod in October, and following requests, the Kiev Diocese announced that parishes could hold a full religious service on the 25th if they wished. The decision affects about 7,000 churches across the country. In an interview with the Guardian, church spokesman Archbishop Yevstratiy Zoria said data would be collected to see how many worshipers attended services on the 25th, which this year falls on a Sunday. “We don’t want to force anyone. We understand that this does not solve anything,” he said. “I personally will decide what to do after talking with my parishioners. It is better to move this process forward slowly and successfully.” Patriarch Kirill and Vladimir Putin at an Easter service in Moscow in 2016. Photo: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images Before the full-scale Russian invasion, a third of parishioners wanted to move to a Western Christmas, he said. The archbishop acknowledged that support was now greater. As of 2019, 1,600 parishes have joined the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which until recently was loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. He has now distanced himself from Patriarch Cyril, with about half the dioceses no longer mentioning him in prayers. The two churches bear similar names. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, tried to force the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to legally rename itself the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The attempt failed when the pro-Kremlin opposition party – now outlawed – appealed to the constitutional court. Zoria said the Ukrainian Orthodox Church supported Ukraine’s statehood, independence, sovereignty and democracy. The Dec. 25 switch is part of a larger national process of dismantling symbols of Russia, the Soviet Union and communism, which took off in 2014 when Putin annexed Crimea and launched a pro-Moscow insurgency in the eastern Donbass region. Statues of Lenin were torn down. Ukraine’s culture ministry appointed a board of experts to decide what to do with other Soviet monuments and streets named after Russian cultural figures such as Pushkin and Tolstoy. “We don’t call it de-Russification. It’s about dealing with the consequences of Russian totalitarianism,” Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko said last week. He added: “We had many meetings. Local opinion will be taken into account. Some monuments could be transferred to parks and museums.” In the Black Sea port of Odessa, activists tied a statue of Catherine the Great with red paint and added a noose. A lit Christmas tree in front of the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in central Kyiv in December 2021. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP Taras Pshenychnyi, a professor of church history at Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv, said his students spontaneously brought up the topic of Christmas and were in favor of moving it to December 25. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. But he said the elderly, including his parents, were reluctant to change the Gregorian model, introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582. This year his family, including his six-year-old son, would celebrate on both dates, he said. In the 16th and 17th centuries some Ukrainian bishops of Unia tried to switch to the Gregorian date, which Poland and other European Catholic countries had adopted. They were unsuccessful. At that time, Ukraine was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. It stuck with the Julian calendar, in which the New Year is celebrated on January 14. Between 1914 and 1916, as the First World War raged, a diocese in the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk established the date of December 25. The change was opposed by traditionalists, the intelligentsia and a powerful Russian Orthodox Church. After the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks moved to a Gregorian calendar for political purposes, but the Moscow Patriarchate continued as before. A Christmas bauble hangs on a branch in front of a damaged house near Kyiv in March. Photo: Gleb Garanich/Reuters Pshenychnyi said: “Tradition can be progressive or regressive. We must move away from Russian cultural and spiritual traditions. They are holding us hostage. “It has to be done carefully, but it has to be done. Russia uses its Orthodox parishes on Ukrainian territory as an ideological weapon.” Patriarch Kirill was linked to the KGB and Russia’s modern FSB spy agency, which is a “smart propaganda organisation”, he said. Kremlin politicians have portrayed the war in Ukraine as an eschatological showdown between good and evil. Dmitry Medvedev, former president and deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, often uses biblical allusions. It has threatened to end the west in a nuclear Armageddon. In his latest outburst on Friday, he said Russia’s “sacred goal” in Ukraine was to stop the Devil, or the “supreme lord of hell,” as he called him. He called the Ukrainians “a big pack of barking dogs from the Western kennel.” Pshenychnyi said he did not pay much attention to Russia’s increasingly revealing rhetoric, which includes claims that Moscow is “de-Satanizing” Kyiv. “It’s one of the many fakes that Russia has been doing for the last eight years,” the professor said. “For centuries, they have been trying to shape some kind of image for Ukraine. Yesterday we were not a state. Today we are Satan. It’s stupid and from a bunch of weak people.”
