'Twas the night before everyone else's Christmas.

This is one of those things that I've had to explain, every year for twelve years.

It always starts out very simply.

It starts out in class; at the very end of December, before we leave for Christmas. The teacher would be telling us about what we were going to do when we got back, in January.

Invariably, someone would cry out, "I won't be here on [the first day we were back]."

So I would blurt out, "Mr(s) [so-and-so], I won't be here on January 7th. It's my Christmas."

The teacher would nod, and say, "okay."

*(and I can hear you, mumbling, "Wait, January 7th? Isn't it December 25th?")*

Okay. In a nutshell: there are two calendars. (Obviously, there are more, but we're only concerned with two at the moment.) They are the Gregorian Calendar and the Julian Calendar.

The Gregorian Calendar is the standard calendar, used throughout most of the world. You see down there, where is says "posted by Laukaisyn at", and then the time and date? That is the Gregorian Calendar. (Christmas=December 25.)

The other calendar is the Julian Calendar. The Julian Calendar is almost the same as the Gregorian. Until 1582, the Julian Calendar was the standard calendar (although, it ought to be noted that many parts of the world moved over to the new calendar later. England, for example, moved to the new calendar in 1752.)

It has twelve months, some with 30 days, and some with thirty-one; except for February, with the 29. And there's a leap year every fourth year.

...So, what's the difference?

The Julian calendar is thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar.

Therefore... December 25th on the Julian Calendar is January 7th on the Gregorian.




Another thing that I really ought to touch on, because I have been asked this...

January Seventh is not "Little Christmas", the Epiphany, or any other name for it. As it has been explained to me -- by those insisting that I celebrated it -- it remembers the coming of the wise men bringing gifts to visit Christ. January 7th is actually Christmas -- for me, and any other Orthodox still on the Julian Calendar.

(*I'm not going to go into a comparative essay on the Western church v. Eastern Church thing right now. Later. Sometime before Easter and Paskha, maybe.)*

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