I guess I didn't really realize until this trip to Moscow how recently - in relative terms - religious freedom was expressed in Russia. Only in 1992 was Christmas first (again) openly celebrated. Prior to 1992, Christmas was banned from open/public celebration since the communist rule took over in 1917. So only for the last twenty years has Christmas been openly celebrated, which makes it interesting to be here at this point. January 7th is the date Christmas is celebrated because of a discrepancy between the Julian and Gregorian calendars. While most of the world today runs on the more accurate Gregorian calendar, until Pope Gregory XIII put this forth in 1582 most of the world ran on the Julian calendar. The America's adopted the Gregorian calendar in the 1800's, the Russian government adopted the Gregorian calendar in the early 1900's. The older Julian calendar is still the one the orthodox church follows - hence Christmas is celebrated on January 7th.
We went to an Orthodox mass last night which was pretty cool. It's mostly singing and chanting in Russian language which we did not understand but was very beautiful to listen to. Interestingly most of the Russians attending service did not understand the language either. The formal church language is a much older version of Russian language which is mostly not spoken today and is not understood by most Russian people. I gather this is like attending a Roman Catholic service in the United States where the priests talk in Latin.
Christmas is otherwise much the same in Russia, presents and meals with family and the Christmas Tree. Kids get presents from a "Grandfather Frost" called Ded Moroz. Much like Santa, except he wears blue, and has a helper/assistant who is in fact a blond attractive young woman purportedly his granddaughter Snegurochka. While Europe and elsewhere have a "father winter" character - Snegurochka is uniquely Russian (former USSR-wide actually).
So it's a special treat for me to have one Christmas in the United States this year with my family in Seattle, and another in Russia with the people of Moscow (and my friend/ travel buddy Raffy). It was snowing all day today and was a beautiful day and a white Christmas. Merry Christmas from Moscow!
