Celebrating Christmas as a political act: church calendrical reform in Ukraine

Changing the date of Ukraine’s Christmas celebration was not a one-time action but progressively unfolded from 2016 to 2023. Draft laws, legal explanatory notes, and public discussions reveal arguments for calendrical reform grounded in authority, authenticity, and tradition. Advocates of the change employed political arguments to support their cause, such as defending religious minorities, in 2017. Arguments in favour of Ukraine distancing itself from Russia–its customs, traditions, religion, and calendar–were frequently cited in public discussions. To explain how and why the promotion of a new Christmas date forms part of the current state religious policy, Catherine Wanner interviews Oleg Kyselov, an expert on ecumenism and ecclesiology in Ukraine.