“Should Bandera's birthday occur…”

Between St. Basil the Great and Bandera, the OCU chooses Bandera. Collage: UOJ

The issue of changing the church calendar sparks heated arguments mainly because of the celebration of Christmas. Yet besides this most important feast there are many others as well. For example, on January 1 according to the New Style, the Church celebrates the feast day of St. Basil the Great and the Circumcision of the Lord. And although these feasts are not among the Twelve Great Feasts, they are among the most important in church tradition. One might recall, for instance, the texts of Christmas carols: “And the second feast is that of Saint Basil…”

At this point the reader is likely to wonder why we are stating such obvious things. The reason is that in OCU and UGCC circles, January 1 in recent years has been firmly “staked out” as the celebration of Bandera’s birthday. And before the war, many clergy and believers would take part on that day in torchlight marches.

Since Dumenko has said that his subordinates are proud when they are called “Banderites,” we decided to check: has anything changed in the OCU with the introduction of the new calendar? Have church feasts displaced the celebration of the birthday of “our father Bandera”?

On the pages of three popular OCU “priest-bloggers” – Roman Hryshchuk, Oleksandr Dediukhin, and Serhii Tkachuk – on January 1 there are congratulations posted for Bandera’s birthday, but there are no publications whatsoever dedicated to Basil the Great or to the Feast of the Circumcision. It seems that, in the souls of these clerics, Stepan Andriyovych has remained in first place. However, there is another possibility.

In church practice there is a tradition whereby, when dates coincide, a less significant feast is transferred to another day. In the Typikon, special notes are provided for such cases: what is transferred, and where.

According to information from sources, in some OCU parishes such footnotes have appeared: “If it should happen that the birthday of Bandera falls on the Circumcision of the Lord, then we sing nothing at all for the Circumcision.”

Still, perhaps it is slander.

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