Thread: Merry Christmas/Hristos se Rodi

hello ilijia,

veselogo rizdva.

thanks,
mike

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

I just wanted to wish every Eastern Orthodox member Merry Christmas!

Out of curiosity Mikey, where are you from? I'm half-Serbian, half-Macedonian by birth, dual Serbian/Canadian by citizenship

Καλά Χριστούγενα Ilija!!

OK, I'm late, shoot me.

I'm (Greek) Orthodox Christian myself; though we actually celebrate Christmas on the 25 of December .

Thanks George. I used to know the proper hail and response for both Xmas and Easter in Greek but i forgot them. Those little differences like in dating are funny considering that our churches stem from yours and are identical in both the articles of faith and church administration.

Just checked Wikipedia. Ortodox churches follows the old Julian calendar, all others the Gregorian.
Russia changed after the revolution, therefor the October revolution happened in November according to the rest of us. That is the western countries.
Jews have their own way of measuring time, like Muslims. North Koreans have their own. They have year one the year Kim Il Sung took power. Probably there are other cultures that have other calendars as well.
Just a bit of trivia

yeah, almost forgot, Merry Christmas on you guys

Mats

Well I've been barely posting here a few weeks and came across this thread just now.

I have to say 'well done' first of all to all of you for keeping such a warm environment of friendliness and true community spirit. Most groups I'm a member of usually involves a slinging match - who insult who the most!

Being Greek Orthodox, I have to say we celebrated Christmas on the 25th December. However, the other Orthodox nations - primarily the 'Slavs' (Serbia, Russia, etc) as well as others actually celebrated yesterday. Some people were off work yesterday and I was surprised how many were off.

It's only Easter (Πάσχα) that the Greek Orthodox Church celebrates with the Old Calendar.

Xristos se rodi to all that celebrated yesterday!

Originally Posted by Olav Vittfarne

Probably there are other cultures that have other calendars as well.

Egyptians actually use the same calendar that the ancient pharaohs did, with exactly 30 days in each of the 12 months, but 3, 10 day weeks in each of those mnths. They make up the difference with 5 intercalary holiday days in a row at the 'end' of the year which I think lands in November now. They now also add a day each 4 years to make a leap year keeping the calendar from shifting around as it did for 3000 years! The change was recommended by Alexander, but not instituted till one of the Ptolemys (Ptolemies?) if memory serves me.

There are two main ways to mark the passage of time:
With a Solar calendar marking the equinoxes and solstices. Noon and midnight are important times to start counting the hours with this.
With a Lunar Calendar following the tidal effects at various times of year. The appearance of the New Moon at dawn is the most commonly used marker although there are a number of different Lunar Calendars in use the world over.
Neither of the two really takes precedence since both are equally relevant.

The ancient Egyptians were around sooooooooo long that they actually noticed the third way called the Sothic Cycle. Not only does the earth spin to make a full day as a cycle, and rotate the sun to make a full year as a cycle, but it also wobbles (think of how a spinning top moves) to creat the Sothic Cycle every 1460 years! The appearance of Syrius at Dusk is the marking factor here. The noticeable difference is that the 'North' star changes throughout the centuries. Polaris (the tail star of the Ursa Minor constellation), our current North Star, wasn't the North Star during the Dark Ages. That was the tail star of Draco and it was even closer to perfect rotational north than Polaris could ever get.

Tyring to reform calendars to bring all these time measurement systems into global synch is one of the most fascinating conundrums of the modern (post modern?) world.

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