In 2017, for the first time in history, Ukrainians celebrate Christmas on December 25 along with all other Christians who use the Gregorian calendar. On November 16, the Verkhovna Rada voted to make this day a day off by canceling the official holiday on May 2.

On the main questions about the newly found holiday on the air of Radio Crimea. The realities are answered by the Ukrainian historian Alexander Zinchenko.

"Why did we have two Christmas days at all, Alexander?".

- This is a long-term calendar incident. Of course, no one knows when exactly Jesus Christ was born, and the tradition of celebrating his birthday at the end of December is in fact a relic of Latin paganism. The holiday of Saturnalia just happened on the days of the winter solstice, and this tradition later merged with the Christian. The problem is that calendars are not very accurate. Guy Julius Caesar decided it in his own way, introducing a leap year, but every 128 years, ran another extra day. Accordingly, for 1280 years the difference became 10 days. Then the Roman Pope Gregory the Thirteenth in the 16th century ordered the celebration of the Passover according to the new calendar, which we call Gregorian as opposed to Julian: every 400 years we decided to remove three leap years. However, Protestants and Eastern Christians did not accept these changes, primarily for political reasons. So, by 1917 the difference between calendars was already 13 days.

- Did Soviet Russia make a correction? What about the then Ukrainian state?.

- The Ukrainian People's Republic just managed to carry out this reform: on February 15, 1918, immediately followed on March 1. A curious fact: if you look at the Soviet calendars of the 1920s, then on December 24 and 25 they are marked as Christmas celebrations. They were removed only in the 1930s, during the next round of struggle against "opium for the people". But after the Second World War, the tradition of celebrating Christmas returns, but not the Gregorian, namely the Julian. Now in different regions of Ukraine they look at the "correct date" for Christmas differently. In general, it is very strange that in 25 years we finally did not transfer it to December 25.

- In how many countries does this duality exist?.

- The fact of the matter is that in a few. Christmas and December 25, and January 7 mark, if I am not mistaken, in four countries of the world, in addition to Ukraine. So it was necessary to compensate for the double holiday by liquidating the weekend on May 2. Why was it even needed? Relax after a day of labor on May 1? Of course, no one likes change: people usually want everything to remain as before. Let's take at least March 8 - what do we celebrate? What for the day off? How do bouquets and sweets affect women's rights? For many feminists on March 8 - it's like a red rag, they call it an element of segregation. We somehow survived the abolition of November 7 and the transfer of Victory Day over Nazism on May 8. Here the main thing is not that we change dates or add new ones. The main thing is the common, adjusted, consistent position of the independent state in relation to its holidays. The return of Christmas on December 25 is just one of such steps.