Leadership of the Kyiv-based Orthodox Church of Ukraine on Tuesday decreed that adherents can go ahead and celebrate Christmas on December 25th like most of the rest of the Christmas-tian world, deepening the rift between their sect and the Moscow-aligned Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Oh haha! Monty Python nerds can make that hilarious People’s Front of Judea joke in the comments again!), which celebrates it on the Julian calendar date on January 7th, Politico EU reports.
“We are giving people the option to celebrate on a different day,” said Kyiv church Archbishop Yevstratiy Zoria, acknowledging the divide between their church and the Moscow-based Orthodoxes, recently the subject of a serious allegations of harboring pro-Russian fifth columnists.