CHRISTMAS FAST BEGINS FOR ORTHODOX BELIEVERS
by Aleksei Mikheev
The last multi-day fast of the year according to the Orthodox calendar, preceding the holiday of the Nativity of Christ, begins on Saturday, and those who wish to celebrate one of the chief Christian holidays must treat the preceding days as preparation for the most important examination in life, thinks Archpriest Pavel Velikanov, chairman of the Academic Methodology Council of the Moscow Ecclesiastical Academy.
"I would like most of all to wish for those who want to celebrate Christmas correctly to treat the fast as a kind of preparation for the most important examination in our life. And this preparation necessarily reveals our weak aspects. We understand that we are much more ill-tempered than we seemed to ourselves and more self-centered, and we cannot be tolerant although we thought we were normal, fully tolerant people," the clergyman said in an interview with RIA Novosti.
He is sure that the shortcomings that rise to the surface as a result of the restrictions imposed by the fast are "testimony that we really are fasting." "When a persons is comfortable during the fast, this speaks of the fact that the fast is not genuine, but when problems that previously were not visible to us rise to the surface, then we can do something about them," Velikanov noted.
It is important to recall that God was born into the world in order to die for the world, and to prepare for the celebration of Christmas with tidying up the home and buying food is incorrect, the archpriest thinks. He said that the days of the start of the fast should be devoted to deeds of piety, to labors, to prayer, charity and mercy in relation not only to those who are far from us but also to those who are always near.
The establishment of the Christmas fast, like other multi-day fasts, dates back to ancient times of Christianity. One finds mention of it from the fourth century in the works of the Blessed Augustine, Philostratus, and St. Ambrose of Milan. In the fifth century, Leo the Great wrote about the antiquity of this fast. Initially it lasted from one to two weeks. At a council in 1166, under Patriarch of Constantinople Luke and Byzantine Emperor Manuil, all Christians were told to keep the fast before the great holiday of the Nativity of Christ for 40 days.
The topic of Christmas in the liturgy as a forty-day preparatory period emerged gradually. At the start of the fast, on 28 November [15 November on the Julian calendar—tr.], there is no mention in the songs of the upcoming event, but then, five days later, on the eve of the celebration of the Introduction of the Theotokos into the temple, in the ninth hiermos of the Christmas canon one can hear the first announcement of the approaching holiday: "Christ is born, glorify him!" Two weeks before Christmas [7 January on the Gregorian calendar] the church commemorates all the Old Testament righteous, thanks to whose piety the faith in the coming Messiah was preserved and his appearance in the world was possible, and in the last week the church glorifies the ancestors of Christ.
One of the greatest problems for believers is the coincidence of the celebration of New Years with the last days of the Christmas fast. The rector of the Moscow church of the Holy Trinity in Khokhli, Archpriest Aleksei Uminsky, said that the Orthodox Christian may permit himself a relaxation of the fast on this day and celebrate the holiday with relatives, since "love is greater than fast and it is generated in the family."
"On New Years one must thank God for the year past and ask his blessing on the upcoming one," the priest said at a press conference in RIA Novosti, giving an example of his parish's tradition of serving the liturgy on New Years Eve. "When everybody begins to explode fireworks, we ring our church bell, and after the service we set the tables and open the champagne," Uminsky shared. (tr. by PDS, posted 28 November 2015)
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