Christmas in wartime is always poignant. In Ukraine this year, tens of thousands will mark the day in muddy trenches, with the sounds of artillery and machine guns taking the place of festive jingles.
Millions of others will celebrate more quietly than usual in Ukrainian cities away from the front lines, with a 10 p.m. nightly curfew and the constant threat of Russian air strikes ensuring that any holiday gatherings are shorter and more anxious than those that took place before the war. Millions more Ukrainians will watch the holidays pass from outside the country, waiting for the moment the war ends and it’s finally safe to return home.
But, for the first time this year, almost all Ukrainian Christians will mark Christmas on Dec. 25 as part of what President Volodymyr Zelensky has called a national effort to “renounce Russian heritage.”
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine – which a 2022 poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 54 per cent of Ukrainians identify as members of – announced in May that it would adopt the Revised Julian calendar in an effort to further separate itself from the Russian Orthodox Church, which has supported Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is predominant in some regions of Western Ukraine, made the same change.
The Russian church, like most Eastern churches, celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ on Jan. 7, but the Orthodox Church of Ukraine said in a statement that the old Julian calendar is now “perceived as connected with Russian church culture.”
Last year, the Ukrainian church allowed its followers to celebrate on Dec. 25 if they chose but still held its formal celebration on Jan. 7. In July, Mr. Zelensky signed a decree to formally remove Jan. 7 as a holiday and make Dec. 25 the national celebration of Christmas.
Despite the regular air raid sirens and Russian missile attacks on the city, Kyiv seems to be adapting well to the change. After spending much of last December in darkness as Russian attacks crippled the country’s energy infrastructure, improved air defences have meant that most of the drones and missiles Russia fires at the city are shot down before they reach their targets.
As a result, Kyiv is twinkling this December, despite the war, with stores on the city’s central Khreshchatyk Street emanating music and lights, while an outdoor Christmas market fills the square in front of the famed St. Sophia’s Cathedral.
Mark MacKinnon