Public holidays · 2026
Orthodox Christmas Day falls on Wednesday, January 7, 2026 in Belarus in 2026.
A public holiday across Belarus: most employees have the day off.
In 2026 it falls on a Wednesday, a working day.
Fixed date: it is on the same day of the year every year (Jan 7).
Saturday and Sunday · A public holiday does not always close every business. Essential services, shops and some industries keep working, and pay rules differ by country and contract.
Orthodox Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus in the churches that use the Julian calendar for religious dates, including the Russian, Serbian, Macedonian and Georgian Orthodox churches and some others. On this site it is a public holiday in Serbia, Belarus and Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the Orthodox community observes it. It is the same festival as Christmas on 25 December in the West, only on a different calendar. Greek and Romanian Orthodox churches, by contrast, celebrate on 25 December. For Orthodox Serbs, Russians and others this is the main religious holiday of the winter.
In Serbia, the celebrations start on Christmas Eve, 6 January, known as Badnji dan, when families bring an oak branch, the badnjak, and burn it in a ceremony, and on Christmas morning a special bread, the česnica, with a coin inside, is broken. Greetings are Hristos se rodi, answered with Vaistinu se rodi, meaning Christ is born, truly he is born. Many people fast in the weeks before, so the Christmas meal is a meaningful feast. After the service the family sits down to a meal that usually includes roast pork in Serbia, with sweet bread and wine.
Everywhere in Belarus.
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Questions
A public holiday across Belarus: most employees have the day off.
Wednesday, January 7, 2026.