Christmas and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

There have been on again off again discussion for the past month or so over Christmas in Ukraine. And once again this has come up in the news cycle as a result of Putin's suggestion of temporary ceasefire for the Orthodox holiday.

What's been interesting to note is that with the new Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church there has been a shift to the West or a more Western orientation on several points – Christmas being one of them.

The Kyiv government is so keen to tilt to the West it has worked with the Patriarch to engender a larger cultural shift and as result much of Ukraine now keeps the December 25 date associated with Latin Christendom and the West. This but hints at a larger liturgical shift and is sure to generate problems in the future within the context of the larger Orthodox world.

Obviously it's neither here nor there to me but it's noteworthy simply because there are in fact some religious angles to this conflict. Some have made this central and have tried to explain and interpret Putin's actions in light of this. I am not convinced that this is case and even less so of Putin's piety.

However, this is part of the larger East-West, Catholic-Orthodox division that has haunted European history for centuries and Ukraine (a state that only came into being in 1991) represents the latest manifestation of this struggle and at present is the front line. In fact it is the larger region that makes up and includes Ukraine that has long been the tangible geopolitical focal point of this larger struggle – the edge or frontier between the Latin West and the Orthodox East. This war is about so many things. There are many cultural and religious angles to the conflict which are secondary when compared to the geopolitics and questions of energy, but in light of the war even these second tier issues have become more prominent and tangible.

Others are more capable of speaking about the insider politics within Ukraine and its new Orthodox Church, but as it was a Western-backed project from start to finish, the fact that its patriarch Epiphanius proved willing to shift to the Gregorian calendar isn't all that surprising – even if the theological optics are pretty terrible. For the Russians this is yet another chapter in the long book of Western intrigues and betrayals.