Such rhetorical questions are, in most cases, preposterous, and very rarely make much sense, but this particular one seems to be quite relevant, and I ask it for a purpose: to finally make clear where we stand, and how firmly and sincerely we stand where we stand. Frankly, the intention is to instigate an honest and balanced discourse on the subject of celebrating Christmas and New Year twice in this Christian-Orthodox country of belated but incipient Europeanism.
There are various suppositions concerning the time of our Good Shepherd’s birth. The fixed ecclesiastical date has been December 25 since the beginning of the 4th century, which falls on the traditional date of the winter solstice on the Roman calendar, and which is precisely nine months after Annunciation on March 25. Christmas Day is a public holiday on January 7 in countries such as Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Moldova, Macedonia, Montenegro, Egypt, Ethiopia and Georgia. Until very recently, it was so in Ukraine too, but no longer, as a result of the Zelensky government’s freshly-adopted decree. History has it that, based on the differences in liturgical calendars perpetuated by the Church, the countries of the Eastern Roman Empire celebrated Christmas on 7 January, which was considered Christ’s birth date by the old Julian calendar, whereas most Christian believers observe the Redeemer’s birth on 25 December, following the Gregorian calendar, which is universally espoused and joyously used throughout the world.
In Georgia, people today have an innate penchant to embrace the globally recognized Day, but at the same time enjoy the historical tendency to celebrate the Great Instant of Joy and Light on 7 January, following the old tradition. Notably, Greece, the paternal country of Christian Orthodoxy, a century ago, officially adopted December 25 as the date to observe Xmas, alongside modification of the church calendar. This numerical alteration was introduced to bring the Greek Orthodox Church into line with the Western Christian tradition of celebrating Jesus’s birth on 25 December.
We could make the same kind of move here in Sakartvelo too, which would culturally contribute to our full-right membership in the European family of nations, but there is something powerful that keeps us rolling on the Christian-Orthodox orbit. Paradoxically enough, Georgian men and women have a proclivity to be mentally Western and spiritually Orthodox at the same time.
Religiously speaking, most of us want and are sincerely prepared to dig in where we are right now, strongly desiring to be baptized and married in the Christian Orthodox tradition, being confident that our divine righteousness could only be based on our belonging in the Christian-Orthodox world. Well, there might be sporadic exclusions, especially among the young, and, specifically, among those who were lucky enough to go to Western schools. Yet even the most highly westernized Georgian politicians often make allusions to Christian Orthodoxy as the foundation of our statehood and morality.
It is curious that for the majority of Georgians, the old values are very much alive and functional, among them the sense of the traditional family; a strong belief in old-style marriage; respect of children for seniors; the fading-away patriarchate (still hanging on in there); electing a dictatorial Tamada as a master of ceremonies at get-togethers like weddings, wakes and birthdays; ubiquitous folk singing and dancing; a marriage proposal still being the man’s job; profuse toasting when imbibing; keeping up the national cuisine as the most acceptable diet for the majority of local gourmands; the habit of turning friendship into a strong vehicle for survival; particularized love for the motherland as the loftiest spiritual inner urge; unceremoniously vexing loudly in public places; overdosed doting on little ones; obfuscated poetic expression of thoughts both in black-and-white and in oral word; men’s selfless veneration of mothers, sisters and daughters; taking a neighbor’s house as one’s own family abode; having a clergyman kick the ball into a game; explicit refusal to cremate the dead; building huge marble-cement-and-gravel cemeteries over wide swathes of land with images of the deceased on public display; being loath to carry plastic bags and disposable gloves while walking four-legged family members in the street; goggling at those with unorthodox orientations; knocking on a friend’s, relative’s or neighbor’s door without a preliminary phone call; living in one’s parents’ house well into a solid age- this list being short of numerous other indigenous ways and means. Having all those traditional kinks and quirks in our blood and everyday life, so unwestern, how natural and unbiased can we look when in Rome, where one has to do as the Romans do?
Op-Ed by Nugzar B. Ruhadze
