Eastern Orthodox faith community prepares to celebrate Christmas
Christmas is making an encore appearance this weekend as people who practise Eastern Orthodox faiths are preparing to celebrate the holiday on Sunday.
Denominations of the Eastern Orthodox Church have more commonalities than differences, say priests and cultural experts, but there are some nuances as to how each culture celebrates the birth of Jesus.
INTRODUCTION OF THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR
Tom Tavouktsoglou, a former secretary for the Greek Orthodox community in Edmonton, said only a minority of his community now celebrate Christmas during the first week of the New Year.
All factions of Christianity agree that the birth of Jesus is on Dec. 25 but they do not agree on which day of the year that falls on. The divide began in October 1582 when Pope Gregory XIII introduced the civil calendar in use today.
The Gregorian calendar was instituted to fix the mistakes of the Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Cesar on Jan. 1, 45 BC, which did not take into account the scientific rotation of the sun.
Because the Orthodox religion did not fall under the oversight of the Pope, they left the calendar to the old ways but some churches are slowly changing their official date.
A CELEBRATION OF AGRICULTURE
All members of the Orthodox Church begin a period of fasting 40 days prior to Christmas. No meat is allowed during the entire fasting period and toward the end fish must also be excluded from the diet for those in the Greek denomination.
After Christmas Eve mass on Saturday, Tavouktsoglou said many people will gather with their family and friends to host a giant feast on the last day of their fast.
“It is to recognize the body and soul and prepare them to celebrate this major event,” said Tavouktsoglou.
People in the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox faiths will have 12 traditional dishes during Christmas Eve, representing Christ’s apostles, said Father Roman Shiyan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. Elias. The most classic dish is Kutia, made of sheaf of wheat with honey and poppy seeds, which represents family and a good year of harvest.
Larissa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, of the Ukrainian Folklore Centre, recounted a long-standing tradition where the head of the household would throw a spoonful of Kutia up in the air and the more that stuck to the walls, the more prosperous the year would be.
“Many houses in Edmonton have stains on the ceiling,” she chuckled.
INVITING IN THE DEAD
Slavic cultures are very conservative and preserved many layers of pagan traditions, said Jelena Pogosjan, professor of Ukrainian and Russian folklore at the University of Alberta. Some of those traditions are about inviting ancestors to their house to celebrate a fruitful agricultural cycle.
It is a sacred ritual where they invite the dead by embroidering a towel that hangs from the window of each house to show the dead a guided pathway.
In Ukrainian traditions the host will put together a straw doll, which is where the ancestors will stay, but in Russian traditions hay is stuffed under their plates and tablecloth for them to sleep on.
CHRISTMAS CAROLLING
St. Nicholas Day, Dec. 19 on the Julian calendar, is traditionally a day for gift giving.
On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox spend their time going from house to house carolling.
People in the Russian Orthodox faith will often be seen with representations of goats while Ukrainians represent death in a more westernized way, Pogosjan said.
CHANGING TIDES
For the first time this year the country of Ukraine has officially recognized both Dec. 25 and Jan. 7 as national holidays.
“The Ukraine decision I think shows that the country is coming into this common space with the rest of the European nations regardless of religious traditions,” said Shiyan.
“They are showing the commonalities with the other European nations and the rest of the world who celebrate nativity on the 25th of December.”
Sembaliuk Cheladyn thinks that it is just a marketing scheme to bring in the commercialized world.
But overall the old traditions are still going strong.