If you wander around online Orthodoxy for any length of time, you'll soon come across: "the calendar question." I am not going to get into it here, except to explain that Orthodoxy remained on the Julian calendar until the 1920s when some local Orthodox Churches decided to use the "new" Gregorian calendar for fixed-day feasts. All Orthodox still use the "old" Julian calendar in calculating the date of Pascha, or Easter, but some, including the jurisdiction of the parish I attend, use the new calendar for fixed feasts.
Thus, for "new calendrists" the Nativity Fast begins today, and the Feast of the Nativity will fall on 25 December with the rest of the Western Christianity. Old calendar Orthodox will not begin the Nativity Fast until 28 November (on the new calendar), which means old calendar Christmas falls on (new calendar) 7 January.
Got it?
When I started attending my Orthodox parish, the use of the new calendar made the transition from Protestant Christianity to Orthodoxy much easier. I had, for several years, observed the feast days of the Episcopal Church, and so, to find these fixed day feasts at the same places in my Orthodox parish helped a lot. There's enough new stuff for transitioning Orthodox to get used to apart from the calendar.
But lately the Christmas ads have begun to break through. Anna and I don't watch much TV--a few hours a week at most--but even our brief forays into entertainment land have already deluged us with Christmas ads. In some ways, this is helpful, since we begin the Nativity Fast today.
But in other ways it is a hindrance. The Nativity Fast is a preparation for the Feast, not the feast itself. It is a season of repentance, not a season of material indulgence. We spend these forty days examining our hearts and lives, confessing and wrestling against sin. And most of the visual images and verbal messages we will see and hear are temptations to pride, greed, gluttony, deceit and lies, yes, even lust. All the death-inducing sins will be dressed up in ribbons, bells and bows and presented to us. It can be maddening.
"Make of these stones bread"--so that we can gorge ourselves. "God will not let you dash your foot against a stone"--so we can take on more consumer debt as we chase a materialist image of Christmas. "All these I will give you, if--" If we bow down to the god of this age. A god of excess, of material wealth and pleasure, of economic bondage.
Our Lord has met these temptations, and we will have to as well.
If our parish was on the old calendar we would have the benefit of being able to begin the fast after Thanksgiving. Not a small gift, if you ask me. We would also be able to quite consciously avoid celebrating the Feast until the world had long been surfeited and hung over from both Christmas and New Year's. The old calendar would help, I think, to preserve the sacredness of the season.
But if our faith is meant to be a struggle, a daily bearing of the cross, then the parish life in which I celebrate according to the new calendar will certainly conform to that struggle. Maybe, then, the celebration of the Feast, which will not come till 25 December, and will last till well past New Year's, will be the more sweet because more sacred, having been fought on the enemy's turf, and, in the grace and power of Christ, won for our Lord's glory and praise.
Posted by Clifton at November 15, 2004 06:15 AM | TrackBackI'm surprised that Fr Pat doesn't make some sort of dispensation for Thanksgiving.
Posted by: Dave at November 15, 2004 03:32 PMJust 2 notes: Thanksgiving doesn't always fall outside fo the Fast on the OC - only when Thanksgiving is early.
Check with your priest about the holiday though: Mtr Philip (indeed, most all the scoba jurisdictions) gives a dispensation for Thanksgiving.
Posted by: Huw Raphael at November 15, 2004 05:45 PMYes, we DO get a "relaxation" of the fast for Thanksgiving. And as Fr. Pat told me last year, the fast is over (for the day) after you've received Communion (or in your case, attended the Liturgy). So go to the Pan-Orthodox Thanksgiving Divine Liturgy on Wednesday evening, and then stop by McDonald's or Burger King or whatever your little heart desires on the way home. (BTW, I stopped at Taco Bell last year!).
As for where the Thanksgiving Liturgy will be? That question has yet to be answered (I checked with Fr. Pat this morning).
TE
Posted by: Theodora Elizabeth at November 15, 2004 06:30 PM