A Brief History
On December 25, 1991, on the day that Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s referendum was completed, meaning Ukraine was no longer part of the USSR. In fact, the next day, the USSR itself ceased to exist.
Digging Deeper
Ukrainian independence had been declared back on August 24, 1991, but became official when the December 1, 1991 national vote on leaving the USSR became finalized. In Ukraine at the time of independence, Christmas was usually celebrated on January 7th, although the horrible events surrounding the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine caused Ukrainians to decide to break with the tradition shared with Russia of celebrating Christmas on January 7th, and to change the national recognition of Christmas to be December 25th. In order to accommodate those traditionalists that did not want to change the Christmas date, Ukraine recognized both days as a National Holiday!
So much for separation of Church and State!
Note: Mikhail Gorbachev was half-Ukrainian.
Question for students (and subscribers): Should any religious holidays also be national holidays? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Denysenko, Nicholas. The Orthodox Church in Ukraine: A Century of Separation. Northern Illinois University Press, 2018.
The featured image in this article, a USSR stamp scanned and processed by Mariluna, is not an object of copyright according to article 1259 of Book IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation No. 230-FZ of December 18, 2006.
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