The 13 Days of Christmas
Janauary 6 is Christmas for Armenians, and also the Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day. Today, January 7 on the Gregorian Calendar, is December 25 according to the old Julian Calendar and hence celebrated as Christmas by churches which still use this calendar.
These include the Orthodox Churches of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Georgia, Jerusalem and Poland, which includes the non-canonical or “schismatic” churches in Ukraine, Montenegro and North Macedonia.
It is also celebrated by one of two Assyrian church bodies, the Ancient Church of the East. The Coptic and Ethiopian Orthodox Church use their own calendars (modelled on the Ancient Egyptian Calendar), but their feats line up with the Julian Calendar.
I will also add the Old Believers and Old Calendarists. The Old Believers rejected the 17th Century Russian church reforms, and were persecuted as a result - leading to Old Believer communities being found outside of Russia.
Then you have the Old Calendarists or a movement that can be called “Genuine Orthdoox” or “True Orthodox”. The roots of this was the rejection of the calendar revision accepted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, Alexandria and Antioch in the 20th Century. The Greek Old Calendarists are divided into several denominations, which mostly go by the name Church of Genuine Orthodox Christians.
The Russian “True Orthodox” resulted from the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. The formation of ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia) and the catacomb church, which was in resistance to the Soviet state and the Moscow Patriarchate which collaborated with it. While the main body of ROCOR reconciled with the MP in 2007, the “True Orthodox” movement rejected such a reconciliation, viewing Moscow as a Soviet/KGB church. There is , of course, more than one such denomination.
If you think the world of non-canonical Orthodox churches confuses you, you’ll be in for a shock when you start to explore the world of independent Catholicism, though less so Continuing Anglicanism.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate on this day.