Who is Julian? I will slightly disappoint you – I’m talking about a calendar…the Julian Calendar. Let me share with you my recent finding. It was a poster. As it was distributed in December, so, of course, it was about the end of the world. You probably still remember that loud topic… But what was interesting, this poster included some unusual information. It was telling a schedule of the planned “end” in a quite simple form: “21st December – the end of the world, 1st January – New Year, 4th January – the end of the world according to the Julian calendar (originally Ukrainian phrase- “zastarymstylem” literally means “according to the oldstyle”)
I hope you get the joke: there are some countries where the holiday life isorganized according to the Gregorian Calendar, but there other places, where so called “official” and still valid “old” - Julian calendars peacefully coexist together in people’s diaries. And believe me, it’s not an easy task to follow…
To give you the shortest possible background of the Julian calendar I must say that it was the main calendar in most of Europe from 45 BC, when Julius Caesar introduced it to the world, until the year 1582, when the Pope Gregory XIII discovered a mistake has occurred in the system of chronology and offered a reform. The new calendar was successfully ratified and named after its author “Gregorian” and became a predominant time-displaying device in the most of Catholic Europe. But this calendar was not accepted by Orthodox countries, which continued to use the old Julian system. And so it is by now…The Julian calendar is currently 13 days behind Gregorian. Actually a tricky part comes even in phrasing. Let’s take a Christmas dating for example: it would be wrong to say that “25th December is Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar and 7th of January is Christmas according to the Julian calendar”, as in both cases Gregorian calendar is used. According to the Julian Calendar Christmas is also on 25th of December….just this date is always 13 days later than in the Gregorian.
I come from Ukraine, country where traditions are kept even tighter than the border grating (the latter one is quite strict as can imagine). The Julian Calendar is one of that traditions too. So, breaking all the rules of winter celebrating Christmas comes for Ukrainians only a week after the official New Year. We are somewhere in between: having our official (Gregorian) calendars on our tables, we still use the Julian Calendar for religious needs. You would think what is the problem with it? I’ll tell you. Sometimes being two weeks later for me is like a huge jet-leg feeling… it brings confusion, misunderstanding and discomfort into my life.
You probablythink isn’t it great to be able to choose when you want to celebrate or you even can celebrate a holiday twice. But no, it does not work. It is not the first time when I’m left without Christmas or Easter just because I don’t spend it at home… Every year when it’s near Christmas time I feel something is going wrong – the New Year’s Party is always breaking peaceful preparation to Christmas. Official calendar reminds you to open your Champagne on the first Eve of January, but if you follow the Julian Calendar – you still have two weeks to go. I personally think that Christmas should be first. Some people rightly claim that the natural process is missing in our waiting for Christmas: the holiday that comes first is more important, the second always stays behind.
There are many discussions around this topic and I hope the ecumenical dialog will bring some positive results in near future, meanwhileI wish you a Happy New Year…according to the Julian Calendar!
p.s. Next time you travel abroad - don’t forget to check the “calendar-zone” along with the time-zone of the country.
Olha Pushchak, History Department, Ukraine
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