Merry Christmas to "Old Calendarists"
FROM TODAY'S PRINT EDITIONS:
Merry Christmas to anyone of the Eastern Orthodox faith still among the “Old Calendarists”
using the Julian calendar. By that reckoning, today is Dec. 25. The “modern” Gregorian calendar was promulgated in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. The update was needed to keep the Western church calendar in step with the seasons by imposing a new leap year system. Most Western countries had adopted it by the 18th century. The Julian calendar has now fallen 13 days behind the Gregorian.
(AP PHOTO: Mikhail Metzel, 2010)
Posted by Frank Roylance at 12:01 AM | Permalink
| Comments (1)
Categories: From the Sun's print edition, Sky Notes
Categories: From the Sun's print edition, Sky Notes
Comments
Thanks for this cultural note. As a New Calendar Orthodox Christian, I was delighted to encounter a bit of the Old Style at Monticello. Thomas Jefferson's tomb stele is marked with his birth date and O.S., then his date of death and N.S. I believe that England adopted the new calendar around 1753. Russia only adopted it with the Kirensky Revolution and the church council that year recommended adoption, but the subsequent Bolshevik Revolution tainted that move along with other proposed church reforms.
Posted by: Jim | January 7, 2011 10:09 AM