In the spirit of my resolutions, I wish the very happy Orthodox Christmas to my Russian readers. As you might know, the Orthodox Christmas is celebrated on January 7th, and what is interesting this year is that many people in Russia are only going back to work on Monday, 12th of January.
I looked at how Christmas is celebrated in different countries, and in Bosnia they don’t punish children on the 5th of January (the site is in Russian): it is believed that a punished child will behave badly for the year to come. And last night they apparently had the first public Christmas celebration in Moscow. For this reason the Moscow tube didn’t close until 2am. This could also accommodate those citizens who went to a service at the church or the cathedral (there are 260 churches and cathedrals in Moscow). Today, 7th January, has also seen the Moscow Students’ Parade, for which purpose many Moscow streets were once again closed for traffic. Of course, the main feature of this Christmas on my memory is that there is no officially appointed Head of the Russian Orthodox Church at the moment, following the decease of the Patriarch Alexy II (you can also read the Orthodox Wiki about Alexei II or survey the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church).
And attached is another vintage postcard from my family album. You can say that it dates back to the early 20th c. The inscription in Russian says what is equivalent to the English ‘Merry Christmas’, but without ‘merry’ (S RozhdestvOm KhristOvym – literally ‘With Christmas‘).