Why I continue to celebrate two Christmases

By Lethbridge Herald on December 18, 2025.

Lubomyr Luciuk
For the Herald

Every year, I celebrate Christmas twice: once on 25 December, when I go to church, sing carols, and share a good meal with my Canadian friends; and again on 6 January, when I mark the ancient Holy Supper of my ancestors.

On the 25th, the greeting is the familiar “Merry Christmas!” On the 6th, as the first star appears in the sky, we hail one another with the words that have opened Ukrainian Christmas for centuries: “Christ is born! Let us glorify Him!”

I have always done both. Now I understand that keeping two Christmases is no longer just tradition. It is resistance.

When I was a boy, the calendar wasn’t symbolic; it was simply  generous. On 19 December, Sviatyi Mykolai_—St. Nicholas—came to Kingston’s Ukrainian community. We gathered in St. Mary’s School. Good kids got treats; bad ones received a thorny twig bestowed by Chornyi Voron, the Devil himself. Even then, I suspected it was just Mr. Polywkan in blackface. That didn’t make the thought of receiving what he was handing out any more agreeable. At least I now admit I wasn’t always good for goodness’ sake.

Then came 25 December, and after that our Holy Supper on 6 January: three feasts, one near-seamless celebration. There was never any confusion about who we were—Ukrainian and Canadian, Eastern and Western, all at once. We belonged to both worlds, and both belonged to us.

All of this had an unexpected political resonance. Ukraine’s 2023 decision to shift its official Christmas to 25 December was not a simple administrative gesture. It was a deliberate break with the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate, whose loyalty to Putin’s regime is notorious. Since Ukrainians are nothing but “little Russians,” Moscow’s hierarchs insist Christmas must be celebrated on 7 January under the Julian calendar. Ukraine’s choice of the 25th signalled how Ukrainians have determined a different orientation—away from Moscow and toward Europe and the democratic world.

Yet millions of Ukrainians—in Ukraine and abroad—will still celebrate twice. This is not indecision; it is a signal of wholeness. One Christmas looks toward the civilization Ukrainians are fighting to rejoin. The other descends into the deep strata of Ukrainian culture: the villages, churches, and rituals that have survived centuries despite everything predatory neighbours tried to erase. Keeping both is a declaration: we contain past and future, and neither is up for Moscow’s minions to dictate.

That depth mattered profoundly in 2004–2005, when Ukrainians rose in the Orange Revolution against a rigged presidential vote. The decisive re-run election was held on 26 December—Boxing Day in Canada, still Christmas season in Ukraine. In that winter, it felt as if the two calendars had aligned. My late father, who spent his life in the struggle for Ukraine’s independence, raised a toast that night: “This time,” he said, “it is real.”

It was—but it was also fragile.

The forces that tried to steal that election re-emerged in 2014. They came with bullets. Then, in 2022, they came with tanks. Their objective remained the same: to extinguish all things Ukrainian. They have failed. Just a generation ago, many Westerners thought “the Ukraine” was a region in southern Russia or a make-believe place.

Today, no one makes that mistake. Ukraine and Ukrainians are better known than ever before in history—a silver lining emerging from the fog of war.

This year will be the third wartime Rizdvo in Ukraine. In occupied regions, Russians will continue to try to suppress everything Ukrainian. In free Ukraine, children will be writing to Santa, asking for generators and drones. Across the diaspora, we will remember them and set an empty plate at our tables: for those who cannot come home, for those who never will, and especially for those defending not only Ukraine but Europe itself at the front lines. There will be no truce, no Christmas peace for them. They must endure.

Marking Christmas in January is not sentimentality. It fosters continuity. It reminds us that Russification failed, that Soviet atheism sputtered, and that Putin’s genocidal agenda has been undone. Every mouthful of kutia—the traditional sweet grain dish combining wheat symbolizing eternal life, honey for happiness, and poppy seeds for prosperity—eaten on 6 January, on a date Russia claims as its own, is a reminder that what sets Ukrainians apart is rooted in memories older and more meaningful than imperial pretensions.

So yes—I will rejoice on 25 December and wish you a heartfelt “Merry Christmas.” I will also keep Holy Supper on 6 January, spread hay beneath an embroidered tablecloth, light a candle beside the didukh, a wheat sheaf symbolizing my ancestors, and proclaim: “Christ is born! Let us glorify Him!”

As long as we keep two Christmases, the world will know this: Ukraine will prevail. That’s all I want for Christmas.

Lubomyr Luciuk is a Professor Emeritus of the Royal Military College of Canada and a Senior Research Fellow of the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto.