Are you experiencing Holiday Blues? Is coping with the Christmas season being over hard this year? Maybe your Xmas was spent in hospital or it was a dysfunctional mess and you wish you could do a do over. Well actually, you can. Easter Churches do not celebrate Christmas on December 25th, they celebrate Xmas on January 7th on what is called Theophany which celebrates the Incarnation of God! The reason their date differs from The West is that Eastern Churches use The Julian Calendar, while we in West use The Gregorian Calendar.
What a blessing that we can have two Christmases if we want to! That we we are not forced to take down the tinsel, fir tree, and lights the moment the new year begins! That if your holiday was harrowing and you feel it was less than “Holly” and “Jolly” you can try again, with a fresh slate! To commemorate The Birth of Christ on a older date. For The Roman Catholic Church that made December 25th the date of Christmas by Pope Julius I’s decree in 330 A.D. came after The Eastern Churches were around in 312 A.D. and the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. In fact, The Roman Catholic Church came out of Eastern Orthodox Church and formally schismed in 1054 A.D. but had been drifting apart long before than, especially over The Filioque, Date of Easter, and Christmas. Eastern Christians follow the Older Julian Calendar named after Julius Cesar and instituted in 46 B.C., while Catholics and Protestants use The Gregorian Calendar named after Pope Gregory XIII 1562 A.D. because Julian Calendar started in 46 B.C. which counted down to 1 A.D. and from then counted up to now, that means Jesus Christ our Lord was born, lived, died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven under the Julian Calendar. That means for 1563yrs Christmas was January 7th till Pope Gregory changed the dates to December 25th and made it his calendar. So if you celebrate Christmas as The Orthodox Christians do, you are following an older calendar that existed in the time of Christ, not 1500 years after Christ! Which means January 7th is a truer date and you can join a 1500yr old Christian tradition of celebrating Julian date of Christmas! A calendar from time of Jesus’ First Coming!!!!
We can then have two Christmases! One steeped in older tradition from the time of Christ which is 1500yrs old (January 7th), and the more Western one (December 25th) people have been using for only 462yrs; The Julian January 7th Date is from the time of Christ and is 1500yrs old while the Gregorian December 25th date is only 462yrs old. Forgive the redundancy and repetition, I am trying to make it clear that the Dec 25th date for Christmas is new and young, not even five hundred years old! While the Julian Date is ancient and thus allows you to do a so over Christmas on date used by Christians for much of Church History! Amen.
Addendum:
As I must always state, I disagree with The Eastern Orthodox Church on salvation (soteriology), icons, and many doctrines. This is not an endorsement of their churches, but thay they follow a calendar used in time of Julius Cesar and our Lord Jesus Christ.
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