The Messenger, Georgia
Jan 5 2010
Georgia celebrates Christmas
Wednesday, January 6
The Georgian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 7, which
is December 25 on the Julian Calendar, as do the majority of Orthodox
Christians. Although Easter is the principal Orthodox Church
celebration, Christmas and New Year are celebrated as an extended
holiday.
The Nativity of Christ was initially celebrated as a joint feast with
Theophany, January 6/19, as it still is in neighbouring Armenia. The
actual date of the birth of Christ is not known, but after the
conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in 312 a number of
official pagan festivals were transformed into Christian ones, on the
same dates, as a means of supplanting pagan worship. December 25 was
one such date, and became fixed as the date of Christmas throughout
the Christian world when the cycle of fundamental feasts and fasts was
developed during the first six centuries of the Common Era. Most
Orthodox continue to use the Julian Calendar because this cycle of
feasts and fasts cannot be kept on the Gregorian Calendar in some
years.
The Messenger wishes its readers of every faith and none, from every
part of the world, a very happy Christmas. Our next issue will appear
on Friday December 8.