Armenian apostolic church belongs to the non-Chalcedonian group of churches. That’s why we celebrate Christmas on the 6-th of January, unlike , for example, the followers of the Catholic church, who celebrate Christmas on the 25-th of December. The reasons of that are the differences between the Julian and Gregorian calendars. While Armenian apostolic church uses both of them, Catholics and Greek orthodox use only the Gregorian calendar.
But that’s not the main difference between us and other churches. This difference is more about the culture: while in the West Christmas is the main winter holiday, for Armenians the new year remains more important. But why? Why don’t we celebrate Christmas like the most of nations in the world?
The main and the only reason is the soviet past of Armenia: as we know, in the early Soviet Union the religion was illegal, and the government was trying to eliminate the religious traditions, including the importance of Christmas. But also they couldn’t just get rid of the winter holidays. So they decided to change the conception of Christmas, getting rid of the religious part, and that’s how new year became more popular and more important, than Eid Al-Adha in the Muslim post-soviet states and Christmas in the Christian post-soviet states.
Տարոն Փաշինյան 