When a nation under existential assault chooses to change the date it celebrates Christmas, the decision reveals something fundamental about how identity is forged – and weaponized – in modern conflict. Ukraine’s third year of observing Christmas on Dec. 25 rather than the traditional Orthodox date of Jan. 7, following the old Julian calendar, represents more than religious reform.
It is a deliberate act of civilizational realignment, a public rejection of Russian cultural dominance, and evidence that this war is being fought as much over questions of belonging and self-definition as over territory.
The stakes of this symbolic shift become clear in Ukrainian homes this Christmas Eve, where families gather around tables laden with kutia – the traditional wheat pudding sweetened with poppy seeds and honey. An extra portion sits in the corner reserved for icons and family photographs.
But alongside the offerings for long-deceased ancestors, many Ukrainian homes now set aside servings for those who fell defending their country. The ritual adaptation is small but telling: Ukraine is incorporating the trauma of war into its most sacred traditions, ensuring that this generation’s sacrifice becomes part of the national story.
President Volodymyr Zelensky formalized the calendar change in 2023, but the decision had been building since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea accelerated Ukraine’s turn toward Europe and away from Moscow’s orbit.
Russia’s invasion aims not merely to seize Ukrainian land but to erase the premise of Ukrainian distinctiveness
As Oksana Poviakel, director of Kyiv’s ethnographic Pyrohiv Museum, explained when the change was announced: “We are separating ourselves from the neighbor who is currently trying to destroy our state, who is killing our people, destroying our homes, and burning our land.”
The language is blunt because the stakes are existential. Russia’s invasion aims not merely to seize Ukrainian land but to erase the premise of Ukrainian distinctiveness – to prove, as Vladimir Putin has repeatedly insisted, that Ukraine is not a real nation but a wayward province of the Russian world.
The Christmas calendar thus becomes a battlefield in a larger war over historical narrative and cultural legitimacy. By aligning with Western Christianity’s Dec. 25 observance, Ukraine signaled that its future lies with Europe, not with the Russian sphere. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople’s 2019 decision to grant autocephaly – full autonomy – to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was the ecclesiastical precursor to this shift.
Moscow has never forgiven that move, viewing it as Western interference in what it considers its canonical territory. The fact that Patriarch Bartholomew met with Pope Leo XIV in Turkey in late November to sign a Joint Declaration on Christian unity only reinforces the geopolitical dimensions of religious authority in this conflict.
Yet Ukraine’s assertion of independence through calendar reform unfolds against a backdrop of relentless violence that makes such symbolic gestures feel both defiant and fragile.
Even as this Christmas approached, Russian forces systematically targeted civilian infrastructure across Ukraine. The grim Christmas tableau underscores Russia’s strategy of making Ukrainian cities uninhabitable. There are no holidays for the aggressor, and the message is clear: Russia intends to make the cost of Ukrainian independence unbearable.
The violence persists even as diplomatic efforts sputter forward. Trump administration envoys have shuttled between Moscow, Kyiv, Miami, and Washington seeking an elusive peace deal, but Putin’s demands remain maximalist.
He insists on keeping occupied Ukrainian territory – nearly a fifth of the country – and threatens to “cut Ukraine off from the sea” by seizing Odesa and Mykolaiv, which would reduce Ukraine to a landlocked rump state. Meanwhile, Russian forces continue their grinding advance in the east, desperately seeking to capture the strategic city of Pokrovsk after months of siege.
Even as the fierce fighting continues, composer Mykola Leontovych’s “Shchedryk”– the Ukrainian carol the world knows as “Carol of the Bells” is being sung all over Ukraine, and not only. That haunting melody, with its insistent rhythm suggesting both urgency and hope, has become an anthem of Ukrainian resilience even as Russian forces occupy the composer’s hometown.
Ukraine has found some unexpected support beyond the battlefield. Pope Leo XIV, who succeeded Francis earlier this year, called Ukraine “martyred” at his May inauguration mass when he met with Zelensky.
Ukraine will determine its own cultural orientation regardless of Moscow’s objections.
On Dec. 9, Zelensky met again with Pope Leo at Castel Gandolfo, where the pontiff pressed for the return of Ukrainian children deported to Russia – a war crime that has seen thousands of minors forcibly transferred to Russian families. Moral witness, however quiet, still matters in this war, particularly when it comes from figures like the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch whose authority transcends national borders.
What emerges from Ukraine’s fourth Christmas at war is a portrait of a nation that understands it is fighting not just for survival but for the right to define itself. The decision to celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 is not merely symbolic – it is definitional, a public declaration that Ukraine will determine its own cultural orientation regardless of Moscow’s objections.
As one Ukrainian serviceman put it when the calendar change was announced: “We need to move forward not only with the world but also with the traditions of our country and overcome the imperial remnants we had.”
This process of identity formation under fire comes at a staggering human cost. Earlier this year, President Zelensky acknowledged that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died, though independent estimates suggest the toll is far higher. Civilian casualties mount daily. In cemeteries across Ukraine, rows of fresh graves marked with blue-and-yellow flags have multiplied.
The empty chairs at dinner tables, the children who will never open another gift, the futures extinguished by Russian aggression – these are the costs of Ukraine’s insistence on self-determination.
And yet, Ukrainians persist in celebrating. They sing carols in metro stations, decorate trees in bombed-out squares, and maintain their traditions with fierce determination.
That faith – stubborn, defiant, undiminished by nearly four years of war – reveals what is ultimately at stake in this conflict. Russia’s invasion is premised on the belief that Ukrainian identity is artificial, that it can be erased through sufficient application of force. Ukraine’s response, embodied in everything from its calendar change to its continued Christmas celebrations under bombardment, is a categorical rejection of that premise.
The war will be decided on the battlefield, but its meaning is determined in moments like these: in the choice to celebrate on Dec. 25, in the portions of kutia set aside for the fallen, in the insistent bells of Leontovych’s carol that refuse to be silenced.
The composer lived in Pokrovsk for several years at the beginning of the 20th century and may have begun working on his famous carol there. He was murdered by a Bolshevik agent in Russian-occupied Kyiv in 1921, but his carol embodying the spirit of Ukraine has become known all over the world.
Ukraine’s Christmas is not about the calendar date or even the traditions observed. It is about people who, in the face of existential threat, choose to celebrate life, honor their dead, and believe that peace will come.
More than that, it is about a nation that understands the war being waged against it is not just territorial but civilizational – and that resistance requires not just military defense but the active construction and assertion of national identity.
That may be the most profound lesson of Ukraine’s third wartime Christmas: that in conflicts where the very existence of a people is at stake, every cultural choice becomes an act of defiance, and survival itself is a form of victory.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.