Wouldn’t it be great to have two Christmas holidays each year? While by January Christmas is over for most of the Western Christian world, in Lviv the Holiday Season is only starting.

January 7 is the Christmas Day and a public holiday for the Greek Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainians in Lviv. Christmas in January is also observed in Belarus, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia and Serbia.

The two-week difference is due to the Julian calendar used by the churches of the Eastern rite. When the Western Christianity adopted the Gregorian calendar, Eastern Christians continued to mark religious holidays by the Julian calendar although the Gregorian calendar is followed everywhere in everyday life.