On the Julian Calendar, Church Tradition,

and Standing for the Faith

Christmas and New Year is a time when many Orthodox Christians who follow the Julian (old)
calendar wonder why they do so; or rather, those who follow the Gregorian (new) calendar wonder
why the old calendar Churches don’t want to change. Here is another thorough look at this
question, from a number of angles.
* * *
Lately the question often arises: Why does the Russian Orthodox Church live by the Julian calendar
when the whole world and the majority of Orthodox Local Churches have long since changed to the
Gregorian calendar? And really, why? How cogent are the arguments against the old calendar?
How is the calendar connected with our Christian spiritual life, and what is the significance of
preserving our traditions in the modern world? Historian Pavel Kuznekov talks with our readers on
this subject.
The discussion surrounding the Julian calendar has come up once again, although the question
being asked is not: Why does the Russian Orthodox Church live according to this calendar?—since
the answer is obvious, because this is our thousand-year tradition. Rather, the question is more like
this: Why haven’t we changed to the calendar that the majority of people in the country are using,
which the Union of Peoples’ Commissars called on February 8, 1918 the calendar of “cultured
people”? The question boils down to basically, why do we follow tradition? The answer is obvious:
Because in the Orthodox Church, tradition is important.
Even so, let’s look at the arguments usually presented in favor of “change” from the point of view
of Church tradition, and the practical-everyday argument.
The scientific question—correcting the Pascalia?
The scientific argument goes like this: The Gregorian calendar more accurately describes
astronomical manifestations; namely, it more accurately corresponds to the tropical year—the
earth’s rotational period around the sun. And in order to institutionalize the reckoning of time, the
calendar was introduced, first in Europe, by Gregory XIII. This began in the Catholic world and
then spread to other countries.
But actually, Pope Gregory introduced the new calendar for a different reason. The main idea
behind the Gregorian reform was a correction in the Paschalia. Scholars of the time, mainly Italians,
found that the lapse given in the classic Julian year will in several tens of thousands of years lead to
Pascha falling in autumn, and this would disrupt certain principles. A commission was created, and
after fairly long discussion it came to the conclusion that a reform had to be made in precisely the
Paschalia, and for the sake of the Paschalia the entire Julian year would need to be reformed.
Changes were made, which shortened the year a little. The rule of determining the leap years was
introduced: years divisible by four and 400 remained leap years, and those divisible by 100
remained non-leap years.
And what about the Paschalia for which the calendar was changed? The entire Orthodox world
follows the traditional Alexandrian Paschalia, while the Roman Catholic world never did finish its
work on its own Paschalia, and essentially its reckoning of the Easter date depends upon the same
Alexandrian Pascalia to which are simply joined some corrective add-ons. Moreover, only very
recently, almost just last year, the Catholics of the Holy Land changed directly over to our Orthodox
Paschalia, returning to the tradition they had departed from in the sixteenth century—admitting by
this that the main task in creating the Gregorian calendar is recognized as not having been
satisfactorily completed. All the Orthodox Churches that for practical convenience changed to the
“new style” calendar in the twentieth century have also acknowledged this fact. Formally, they have
changed not to the Gregorian calendar but a New Julian calendar, but for the next several centuries
it will still correspond to the Gregorian calendar. However, in changing over to this new calendar
these Churches still observe the Paschalia according to the old tradition, the Julian calendar,
because the Alexandrian Paschalia cannot be combined with the Gregorian calendar—such is its
inner mathematical apparatus, you might say. It is calculated only on the Julian calendar.
Thus, the first argument falls away, because the main scientific problem motivating the creation of
the Gregorian calendar—correcting the Paschalia—was not satisfactorily resolved.
The calendar of the liturgical year
Let’s now look at the second argument—from the point of view of Church tradition. But first let us
take note: attempts to combine the Gregorian calendar with the Orthodox traditional Paschalia lead
to a whole series of liturgical inconsistencies, for example, the disappearance of the Apostle’s fast.
They disrupt the whole structure of Liturgical life that was worked out over centuries, and can’t
produce anything more than ecclesiastical discord. Essentially, this is an inconsistent system, which,
incidentally, the creators of the New Julian calendar have admitted. When in the 1920s the Greeks,
and after them other Orthodox countries changed to this new style, the aim was the same: to
develop a new Paschalia. But no one could accomplish this, because it is more than just a difficult
task—it is an impossible task. This Paschalia just can’t be done. The only possibility is to do what
the Catholics do: make regular, annual corrections using a complex mathematical formula. But the
question inevitably arises: what for?
So, what is a calendar in Church tradition?
For Church tradition the calendar is a system that is utilitarian and not dogmatic. That is why the
Churches that have changed to the new calendar—the Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian—are the same
sister Churches, we have no dogmatic disagreements with them, and we continue our fraternal
relationships them. But the calendar fulfills a very important function.
The Julian calendar itself was the invention of the pagan world, and has no relationship whatsoever
to Christianity. As a matter of fact, it shouldn’t be particularly dear to us. But the thing is that that
very Alexandrian Paschalia is based on this calendar, and this Paschalia has for centuries—from the
late third to early fourth centuries—determined the structure not only of liturgical life, but the
construct of the entire liturgical year. On this Paschalia a system was formed of Christian feasts,
which began to be created from the fourth century and by the sixth century had taken on a more or
less stable form—nearly what we have today. The calendar fulfills the role of organizing liturgical
life, and it is in this sense that the Julian calendar has already grown and penetrated so firmly and
durably into Church tradition that any attempt to extract it will inevitably lead to very serious
temptations; to what the Greeks called “scandals”; that is, to what is offensive to people who are
used to this liturgical tradition. And liturgical tradition means much more to the Orthodox Christian
than just ritual.
In the example of Orthodox countries that introduced the calendar reform we can see how agonizing
and difficult these processes were experienced by people of the Church, how often they were a
cause of all manner of temptations, schisms, and so on. Opposition to the calendar can also be used
as an excuse to justify schisms, although we understand that behind schisms there is always a
certain pridefulness, an attempt to stand against the Church. And we of course condemn that. But as
it is said, “Do not tempt these little ones”[1]—one should not give an excuse to him who is looking
for an excuse.
From the point of view of Church tradition, such a painful thing as a change of calendar is also, in
the practical sense, not justified by anything. Therefore the idea that lay at the foundation of the
Gregorian reforms, according to which Pascha can only be a spring holy day celebrated inalterably
after the astronomical spring equinox, is based upon false premises. Nowhere in the Holy Scripture
is there anything about the spring equinox, nor does it say anywhere in Holy Scripture that Pascha is
a seasonal feast. The Jewish Pascha is, in fact, a seasonal holy day, connected with the agricultural
cycle. But what is Christian Pascha? It is the remembrance of the Savior’s resurrection. It has no
relationship to astronomical cycles or the rising of the moon and stars.
As for seasons—not only Orthodox but Catholic Christians in the southern hemisphere already
celebrate Easter in autumn, and no one has ever been concerned about that including the current
pope of Rome, who is, as we all know, from South America.
The argument at the root of the Gregorian reforms, as if an argument about natural sciences, is not
only meaningless in Christian tradition, it even contradicts it. This is because as the new Pascha
differs from the old Pascha in that it is no longer a feast connected with earthly life but a feast
connected with the life of the age to come. It is a feast that clears the road for man to the life of the
age to come, to the Kingdom of Heaven. This is a feast that is not of this world, and thus the
movement of the stars or the natural cycles has absolutely no meaning for it at all.
In step with the West
The third argument is the practical convenience of the Gregorian calendar. It is the one most often
presented today. After all, the Protestant countries that for so long had fought against this, that
cursed the papal calendar, eventually changed over to it by force of this argument. The English and
the Swedes were particularly stubborn; as we know, they held out all the way to the eighteenth
century. Incidentally, they did not recognize any celebrations of New Year—they never had our
“New Year” problem. The new year in England began on March 1, according to a very old Roman
Christian tradition. Their change to the papal calendar was tied up exclusively with the demands of
commerce: The dates of business contracts, production terms, and goods transportation had to be
synchronized, because it is the merchants who are dependent upon the calendars of various
countries. The ordinary person after all does not know what date it is today in China according to
the Chinese calendar or in Persia according to the Solar Hijri. But to a merchant who travels here
and there, this question means money. And commerce took the upper hand—it brought Europe to a
unified calendar system according to which it now lives.
What happened in the Orthodox world? Here the situation is more tragic, because it wasn’t even
commerce that decided the issue but banal politics; the Orthodox countries began changing over to
the new style right at the time of the First World War and just after it. There was talk of
synchronizing military supply. First Bulgaria changed, having been drawn into the German military
block, and then, after the revolution in Russia; and once the other countries lost their main anchor in
Russia they also changed. Russia was in this case an anchor of the Julian calendar tradition,
inasmuch as it was a cultural field with which the others had to live synchronously. The Orthodox
countries preferred to synchronize their calendars with the Russians, but when Russia itself changed
to the new calendar, the majority of the other countries immediately changed to this Western
European calendar, but this was done by the government and not the Church. The Churches held to
the old calendar—in Bulgaria, Serbia, and, of course, Russia. Thus, from that moment on the
splintering of the calendar tradition began. Greece was the exclusion. In Greece, which preserved
longer than anywhere else (or at least tries to preserve a unity of political and ecclesiastical order),
both secular and ecclesiastical life where changed to the new calendar at the same time in the 1920s
—not to the Gregorian, but to the New Julian. They tried to do this with the maximum prestige, if
we can say it that way, because they changed not to the Western European calendar but to the
Orthodox calendar, only new. However, Mt. Athos never changed to the new calendar; the old
calendar is upheld there.
And by far not all Orthodox Churches changed. The attempt to present the Greek’s decision
(mainly, the decision of Greek reformists) as a pan-Orthodox decision was not successful. They
deceived Patriarch Tikhon at the time: He was told that there had been a pan-Orthodox decision to
change to the new style, and therefore he published his famous decree about how, for the sake of
Church unity, the Russians also need to change. But as soon as Patriarch Tikhon learned that the
Jerusalem Patriarch did not change, and that other Patriarchates are also unsure, he immediately
withdrew that decree. He was more concerned about not losing ecclesiastical unity in the Orthodox
world, and if the other Orthodox Churches had all agreed to change to the new calendar then it
would have been wrong to show, as they say, Russian pridefulness. But that there was so much
deceit surrounding this shows that the calendar question was not connected with purely practical
aims. Of course, it was all mixed up with politics, because essentially talk was about reorienting
towards European civilization as a whole—to Western, Euro-American civilization. And having
accepted the calendar, the Orthodox world surrendered one of its outposts, which categorically
differentiated, distinguished, and set it apart from the Western world.
Calendar inconsistencies
The change to the Gregorian calendar was not a dogmatic problem. But this problem was
nevertheless very important and essential. And it was rather acutely experienced in Russia.
The people of the Church joyfully, by the way, did not accept the calendar reform also because the
separation of the secular from the spiritual that arose from this turned out to be very beneficial for
the spiritual life of Russia in particular after the revolution. The people of the Church remained in
the good and right world—in the world that was being destroyed by the government and society, but
preserved in the Church. Incidentally, not one of the anti-bolshevik governments recognized the
European calendar: all the documents of the White movement are dated using the old style—this
was another form of isolation from bolshevism. And this as if parallel calendar life continued to
exist to the end of the soviet regime, to the 1990s, as a conscious form of another way of organizing
ecclesiastical life—an organization based on observing traditions in a nation that had placed
rejection of all traditions at the cornerstone of its politics.
The situation changed when the government came to reason and began its return to traditional
values and principles, but naturally no one has the strength nor the means to give up the new
calendar, because this would be an expensive undertaking; and mainly, very inconvenient from the
point of view of state interests. And at that time a process began, which of course cannot but put us
on our guard: The Church gradually began to forget about the fact that its calendar is different.
Dates in parentheses that showed the correct dates of feasts and events in Church life little-by-little
started disappearing. A sort of hybrid calendar appeared that gave feast days new dates, thirteen
days different from those of other Churches. Of course, this evoked some snickering and questions.
And of course, this is not right, and not normal. It creates a certain ambiguous, false situation: We
are acting as though we live according to the same calendar as everyone else, but for some reason
inconsistencies come up regularly.
With Christ, or with the world?
The most well-known of these inconsistencies is the pre-Christmas New Year, around which there
are now especially many various speculations. And here, of course, is a great field for all manner of
insinuation. But the matter is quite simply resolved if, firstly, the New Year be shown on its proper
date, and secondly, we take away the status it had during Soviet times. If in the Soviet block New
Year became the main family celebration of the year, in the rest of the world Christmas had that
status. The vacation days and school days off are centered around Christmas, along with gift giving,
Christmas trees, and so on. The USSR in the 1930s wanted to serve up an old tradition with a new
sauce—leave the tree with decorations but put a new, five-pointed star on top, presenting the tree as
a sort of symbol but without any religious underpinning. Then Grandfather Frost and the Snowflake
Queen were substituted for Santa Claus [who is a substitute for St. Nicholas.—O.C.]. The idea was
to use religious traditions in order to overthrow them and deprive them of their meaning. And it
worked. Now modern people of Russia often don’t know that this is a religious holiday.
The time has come to put everything in its proper place and return all the festivities around the New
Year their original Christmas meaning. Then all the problems will disperse by themselves, and the
civil New Year will be less noticeable—important enough, but at the same time only a preparation
for the real, correct feast, which everyone is waiting for at this time. There is no tragedy in this, in
fact just the opposite: This will stimulate Orthodox people to test themselves: Where are we, with
the world or with tradition? After all, this conflict between the world and tradition is fundamental to
Christianity: Christianity is a religion that stands against the world. It began with a stand against the
Roman festivals. Christians were always accused of not rejoicing when all the pagans were
rejoicing, of celebrating feasts that the pagans do not celebrate, of leading a life of their own.
And after all, this was one of the Lord’s main ideas: to make a person look at this world as at a
temporary stop, to separate himself from worldly habits and celebrations; to make him depart from
the illusion that worldly life is what we are living for.
Later, when Christianity became the state religion and traditional, a certain part of this now
Christian habit became one of the problems of Christian consciousness. It is no accident that
monasticism arose at that time. Monks seek that very stand against the world, while “everyday”
Christianity to the contrary, loses it—it seeks to make Christianity convenient, habitual,
comfortable; to make life what the pagans were accustomed to, what mankind in general is
accustomed to.
But that is characteristic of us; nevertheless the Christian world has always retained this alienation.
It is no accident that monks have always had a special status in Christianity. These were the only
people who led a proper way of life. It is precisely for this reason that laypeople would often go to
monasteries for the feasts—there they could sense the normal life. Everything else is worldly, but it
is a certain palliative, a sort of transitional form between the old and the new man, which is
inevitable, necessary—but not normal.
And by force of this attempt to make the calendar comfortable—so that we don’t have to fast on
New Year’s day while everyone else is celebrating, so that we can travel without taking Church
feast days into account, with inconsistencies and shifts—is all an attempt to make Christianity
convenient, an attempt to make it a practical, comfortable religion that never causes any tension.
But this is nothing other than a direct emasculation of the very essence of Christianity as a religion.
And I consider it to be a great gift of God to be living in Russia, that it suddenly (beyond all
expectation; after all, no one counted on it) discovered this additional means to be convinced of our
own rootedness in a tradition like the Church calendar.
Loving the Church calendar
We preserve the Julian calendar through the Church. The state, which earlier followed it rejected it,
but the Church did not. And by this the Church proclaimed itself to be a treasury of tradition. When
it was earlier considered that the Tsar preserves tradition just as he does the Church itself, when the
state showed itself to be the patron of the Church, the perception arose that the Church can’t do
anything without the state; that it is helpless. Incidentally, many wrote about this helplessness. And
there was such a factor. But now we have calendar support for Church witness—witness that
tradition is not vanity; that the whole religious system and world view is not vanity. This is also an
important point, and to disdain it and even worse to sacrifice it for the sake of practical convenience
would be just that, and nothing other than proof of that very helplessness.
This would mean that the Church is in no condition to stand against the world, that it cannot
withstand the pressure of comfort, the demand for convenience that makes itself known daily,
hourly, even every minute. “How could it be that they over there have one day but we have another?
We have to recalculate something… I can’t comprehend it.” Or “How is this? Everyone is
celebrating and having a good time, but I am still fasting…” These anomalies can be resolved two
ways: to perceive it as normal or to perceive it as abnormal and fight it. But here is the thing, that
Christianity has always been in principle an anomalous religion—from the point of view of
common sense, and from the point of view of this world. It is madness, as the apostle says, that
truly there are things that don’t make sense. But that is why they are so precious to us.
It seems to me that this is one of the most important, most winning traits of our Christianity—our
calendar. And those Churches that preserve it together with us feel this too. The problem is that this
it is hard to make society understand this—but not impossible.
The main thing is to overcome two basic problems. The first is the loss of memory about the old
style, when Christmas is celebrated on January 7, which doesn’t make sense. December 25 is the
Nativity of Christ! And this date must figure in everywhere. But that the world lives according to a
different calendar and for it, for that world, in England, France, and other places, this time has
another date—well, that’s how this world is: It’s shifted. And this is one of the clearest signs, one of
the most visible testimonies to the fact that it has shifted altogether—and that the world has shifted
in relation to norms in all other senses, we know very well. The calendar inconsistency shows this
plainly. Perhaps it is an illustration of apostasy that we can observe.
And of course, we have to love our calendar; and I consider that the priority dates should be those
of the Church calendar. For convenience, of course, the secular date should also be shown—that’s
normal and couldn’t be any other way. But the first date should be the Church calendar date, and no
other.
And a second point: People do not understand the connection between the Paschalia and the
calendar. They think that it is enough to change to the Gregorian calendar and all problems will fall
away. But it turns out that our Paschalia is Julian, not Gregorian—but supporters of calendar reform
are always silent about this. Because the task that was set in the 1920s by initiators of this reform—
creating a new Orthodox Paschalia—was never done, although huge efforts were put into doing it.
And sooner or later we will run up against this problem. But do we need it? These are the questions
that come up in connection with discussions about the calendar.
Traditional calendars in other countries
Inconsistency between sacred calendars and civil calendars is characteristic of very many living
religious traditions, including those of modern Judaism. In Israel, as we know, they have their own
traditional—or to be more exact, renewed—Judaic calendar, based, it’s true, essentially not on the
Biblical but more on Babylonian tradition, but one that has squarely entered into Jewish culture,
first of all Talmudic. This calendar exists in Israel parallel to the civil Gregorian calendar, and each
day has two dates. This has no effect whatsoever on the workings of secular institutions.
In Iran there is the Arabic calendar with a triple date: the European date, the Lunar Hijra, and the
Solar Hijra—and it is not a tragedy. The Official calendar is the Solar Hijra. In Japan and China
they have their own traditional Lunar calendars and although no one lives by them today they have
never been discarded; and traditionally—by the people at least—they are used for all their holidays.
Pavel Kuzenkov
Translation by OrthoChristian.com
02 / 01 / 2016
[1] Cf. Mt. 18:6; Mk. 9:42; Lk. 17:2.

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