The Calendar Question

Why do some Orthodox Christians celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ on December 25th and others on January 7th? In 1924, under the influence of Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis of Constantinople, a small minority of the Orthodox Churches renounced the traditional (Julian) church calendar for the heterodox Gregorian calendar in a non-canonical act of heretical ecumenism in order to align themselves closer with the Roman Catholic and Protestant confessions, tragically creating a division within the Orthodox Christian world. In 1971, Father Basile Sakkos wrote to Archbishop Vitaly (Ustinov) in order that the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia might "condemn this fabrication of the West which has become the cause of so many evils and confusion."

The reader will find answers to the following and more: Why do Orthodox Christians adhere to the Julian calendar? What was the Orthodox Church’s long history of rejecting the Gregorian calendar until 1924? Was this change in harmony with previous councils and the tradition of the Church? Can the Church change the festal calendar or is it dogma? Did the Church make this change or was it the non-canonical actions of a group of renovationists? Why was the Church asked to change her calendar and annul her anathemas? Was this change warranted? Did altering the calendar change Orthodoxy itself?

This critical volume opens with an introduction and endorsement from Saint Philaret of New York who wrote, “All serious and concerned Orthodox Christians should pay attention to this work of Fr. Basil, especially today when there is talk by the modernists of changing the Orthodox Paschalia….The innovation of the New Calendar brought about schism in all the local churches that adopted it.... It is only to be regretted that the Orthodox peoples... were not able to all rise up together and as a great wave overcome and put down this tide of innovations....”