New York Daily News, NY
Jan 8 2005

Merry Christmas, old calendar says

Viken Markarian and his brother Vasken were given money, clothing and
gift bags on Dec. 25, and later that day, the family sat down to a
turkey dinner with all the traditional trimmings.
But, strictly speaking, they were not celebrating Christmas. Their
Christmas was two days ago – and there were no presents.

Viken, 19, and Vasken, 14, and their parents, who live in Jackson
Heights, Queens, are Armenian. They celebrate Christmas on Jan. 6, a
date dictated by the old Julian calendar.

“It sounds crazy to some of my friends,” Viken said after services
Wednesday night at the St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral, on the East
Side of Manhattan. “But, it’s our way.”

The calendar that set Dec. 25 as Christmas is called the Gregorian
calendar because it was adopted during the reign of Pope Gregory XIII
in the late 16th century. It replaced the Julian calendar, named for
Julius Caesar, which incorrectly gave each year an extra 11-1/2
minutes and thus made the dates for Easter and other important
Christian holidays increasingly inaccurate.

Most of the Christian world quickly adopted the Gregorian calendar,
but some ethnic or national Orthodox churches, as well as the
Armenian Church of America, still honor the old Julian calendar for
traditional liturgical reasons – after all, they argue, it was the
one in use when most Christian dogma was formulated.

“At least we’re not the only ones out of step,” one usher at St.
Vartan said. “Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Romanians, you name it – their
Christmas is Jan. 6, too.”

Still, contemporary cultural influences are so strong that even
old-calendar Christians who do not celebrate Dec. 25 as the birth
date of Jesus often exchange gifts on that day. In some cases, there
are gifts on Jan. 6, although this is by no means established
tradition.

“We’ve already had our Christmas,” Vasken said. “We’re not going to
get anything else.” But Jan. 6 is still a special day for the
Armenian community.

There are about 1 million members of the Armenian Church of America
in the United States and Canada, with metropolitan New York home to
the largest single community. This does not include members of the
Armenian Catholic Church, which is allied with Rome and observes
Christmas on Dec. 25.

“For us, Christmas is not exclusively a religious holiday,” said the
Rev. Mardiros Chevian, dean (administrator) of St. Vartan for the
past dozen years. “It’s also a family and community holiday.”

It was Chevian who led the liturgically elaborate Christmas Eve
services Wednesday, while his superior, Archbishop Khajag Barsamian,
spiritual leader of Armenians living everywhere in the United States
except California, Washington, Arizona and Nevada, celebrated the
Christmas Day service Thursday that traditionally ends with the
triumphant proclamation “Christ is born and revealed.”

At the Christmas Eve service, 40 robed teenagers read scriptural
passages before Chevian, a Rhode Islander who was ordained 20 years
ago at St. Vartan, led the hour-long Mass, assisted by six deacons
and a choir singing in Armenian.

After the service, Chevian said that it was impossible for the
congregation – or himself – to ignore the traditional trappings of
the “other Christian” denomination that celebrated Dec. 25.

“Look at that,” he said, pointing to a tall, impressively decorated
Christmas tree standing outside the main entrance to the sanctuary.
“It’s not Armenian, but we recognize the reality of where we are.”
There also were heaps of poinsettias around the altar, another
seasonal touch with no basis in Armenian tradition.

He also displayed a letter he had written to school superintendents
or principals, asking them to allow their Armenian students to skip
classes on Jan. 6 to observe the Christmas holiday. “They usually
excuse our students,” Chevian said. “New Yorkers know about other
people’s holidays.”

In turn, St. Vartan frequently plays host to non-Armenian tour
groups, many of them from public schools. About 100 are scheduled to
visit in the next week or so. “We’ll show them around and tell them
some stories, then give them some Armenian pastry,” Chevian said.

How about exchanges of greetings?

“No problem,” Viken said. “They say, ‘Merry Christmas.’ We say,
‘Shnorhavor soorp dznoont.'”