What is Orthodox Christmas Day?
Orthodox Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus in the Orthodox churches that still use the Julian calendar for fixed feasts, among them the Russian, Serbian, Georgian, Macedonian and Jerusalem churches. It is the same festival as Christmas on 25 December in the West, only counted on a different calendar. On this site 7 January is a public holiday in Russia, Belarus, Serbia, North Macedonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova, among others, and a holiday for the Orthodox community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Egypt and Ethiopia also keep 7 January for Christmas, following the Coptic and Ethiopian calendars. By contrast, the Greek and Romanian Orthodox churches celebrate on 25 December.
In Serbia the celebrations begin on Christmas Eve, 6 January, called Badnji dan. Families bring in an oak branch, the badnjak, and burn it, and on Christmas Day a round loaf called the cesnica, with a coin baked inside, is broken. The greeting is Hristos se rodi, answered with Vaistinu se rodi, meaning Christ is born, truly he is born. Christmas Eve is a fast day, and the Christmas dinner traditionally centres on a roast pig. In Russia, Christmas was largely erased from public life in the Soviet period and became a national holiday again in 1992; New Year remains the bigger winter celebration there.
Why it is observed
The Orthodox churches did not follow the Gregorian reform of 1582. After a 1923 congress in Constantinople several of them adopted the Revised Julian calendar, which matches the Gregorian one for fixed feasts: the Church of Greece and the Romanian church did so in the 1920s, and the Bulgarian church followed in the 1960s. The Russian, Serbian, Georgian, Jerusalem and Macedonian churches kept the old Julian calendar. Between 1900 and 2099 that calendar runs 13 days behind the civil one, so 25 December Julian falls on 7 January, and Epiphany on 19 January. In 2023 the Orthodox Church of Ukraine moved to the revised calendar and Ukraine moved its public holiday to 25 December.
How the date is set
Orthodox Christmas is celebrated on 25 December in the Julian calendar, which currently corresponds to 7 January in the civil (Gregorian) calendar. The 13-day difference holds from 1900 to 2099, so the civil date is 7 January throughout this period.
How it is observed
On 7 January banks, offices, schools and most shops close in the countries where it is a public holiday, and in many of them it falls inside a longer New Year break, as in Russia. Visitors should expect closed shops and a reduced transport timetable. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the day is a holiday for the Orthodox community, and the rules differ between entities and cantons. In Ukraine 7 January is no longer a public holiday. Pay and time off depend on national law and the contract.
Sources
Belarus
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Serbia