Why one calendar and not two
Every canonical Orthodox church calculates Pascha the same way. Pascha, Great Lent, Ascension and Pentecost therefore fall on the same day for Greeks and Russians alike — there is no disagreement there at all.
The difference is only in the fixed feasts, the ones tied to a date rather than to Pascha. Churches on the Revised Julian or New Calendar — the Greek tradition, the Antiochians, the OCA, most parishes in North America — keep the Nativity on December 25. Churches on the Julian calendar — Moscow, Jerusalem, Serbia, Georgia and Mount Athos — keep the very same feast thirteen days later, which lands on January 7 by the civil reckoning. The feast has not moved. The civil date has.
Use the switch above to see either reckoning. Neither is presented here as the correct one.
PaschaGreat FeastFeastFastOne of the hundred lives
September 2026
- The beginning of the church yearThe Indiction.
- All commemorations →
- The Nativity of the TheotokosThe church year's first great feast.
- All commemorations →
- The Exaltation of the CrossA strict fast day.
- All commemorations →
October 2026
- The Protection of the Theotokos
- All commemorations →
November 2026
- The Synaxis of the Archangel Michael
- All commemorations →
- The Nativity Fast beginsForty days, to December 24.
- Venerable Paisius Velichkovsky
- All commemorations →
- The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple
- All commemorations →
December 2026
- The Eve of the NativityA strict fast day until the first star.
- All commemorations →
- THE NATIVITY OF CHRISTThe Twelve Days follow, fast-free until January 4.
- All commemorations →
January 2027
- The Circumcision of the Lord
- Basil the Great of Caesarea
- All commemorations →
- The Eve of TheophanyA strict fast day.
- All commemorations →
- THEOPHANYThe Baptism of the Lord and the manifestation of the Trinity.
- All commemorations →
What this page is, and is not. The Church commemorates several saints every single day of the year — eight of them on an ordinary Friday. What is set out here is the shape of the year: the Twelve Great Feasts, the whole paschal cycle, every fast, and the hundred lives in this collection. For the complete commemorations of any day, follow the link on that day through to the Orthodox Church in America, which publishes the full menologion. Your own parish calendar remains the authority for your community.
A week with one passage
The calendar gives the year its shape. Words for the Narrow Way gives a single saying of Christ seven days — the passage in full, the Greek, the Fathers, and one practice to carry through the week. There are no dates in it, so it fits any year and any calendar.