Two Calendar Innovations: one constructive, one destructive

In the last century when the newly-established Church of Japan asked permission from its Mother Russian Church to change the festal calendar, permission was granted without any autocephalous Church making protest because there was a missionary need for this change. Certain great Christian feasts had to be made to coincide with the important idolatrous holidays of the Japanese, just as in the first centuries of Christianity the Church fixed great Christian Feasts to coincide with great feasts of the idolaters. This action of great missionary significance was like a counter-attack of the Church which persecuted the demons, at the very moment they were wreaking the most havoc. In this way, for example, the feast of the Nativity was arranged to be celebrated on the days of the idolatrous feast of the birth of the sun. So then, we have two Churches that changed the festal calendar: the Church of Japan and the Church of Greece. How great, however, is the difference between these two changes! The first change took place in order to facilitate the spread of Orthodoxy in an idolatrous land, and the other in order to facilitate the introduction of the West’s heresies into an Orthodox land for the glory of Ecumenism. The same act was on one occasion constructive, and on another occasion destructive.

- Dr. Alexander Kalomiros, The Touchstone, 1976, original unedited translation by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA, pp. 37-38.