CHRISTMAS NEVER END

Sunday, January 5th 2020. For the luckiest people, tomorrow is the last day of holidays, before to come back at work.

But there is a good news: for some people, Christmas is on January 7th. They are the people of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the common and historical name of two Oriental Orthodox church of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Tewahedo means being made one or unified.

This church refused to adopt the Gregorian calendar during 1582, continue to use the Julius calendar, without delete days between 5 and 14 October. For this reason, our December 25th was 2 weeks ago.

The Coptic church was founded in Egypt during century I. The name Coptic derived from the terms with Greeks indicated the autuctone people in Egypt (AIGYPTIOI à GIPT à QIBT). The Church became Tewahedo through the last Ethiopian king Haile’ Selassie. In 1973 there was the first official meeting between Pope Paolo VI and Pope Shemuda III. They signed together the common declaration about Christology. In 1993, after the independence of Eritrea, Pope Shenuda ask to be separated from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

How they are celebrating Christmas? First of all, there are 40 days of fast and prayer, during it’s allowed eat only fish during Wednesday and Friday. This fast is ended to the sunset of the Christmas’s eve in the church, when it is possible eat poached wheat and fruits. The day of Christmas, instead, they exchanged candles and grain’s bud, celebrating the birth of Christ leaving at the end of the ceremony an icon: a candle as a simble of the guiding star, singing the Christmas Anthem.

Hoping these informations will be useful. I formally invite all of my readers to go in a Orthodox church in your own city to wish Merry Christmas to our brothers and sisters. You can send photos and videos to the following email address: alessia.bruni87@gmail.com. I will be in the Glasgow church with my daughters on January 7th, so stay tuned to see photos and pictures from this amazing city!