过年好

The Year of the Ox we do now see,
Long life and peace be e'er with thee.
Prosperity and plenty and plenty may'st thou enjoy.
Wherefore we say Gong Hey Fatt Choy!

Adapted from an original prose by Edward

Happy New Year

Dear friends, the time has come to welcome the new year. Let us congratulate our relatives, our dearest people. Wherever you celebrate this holiday – at home, with friends, or maybe even at work, this very moment we all think about our nearest and dearest.

New Year's Eve is a time of hope. I would to wish every one of us peace, love and the fulfillment of all your wishes.

I wish you happiness! Happy New Year!

- Dmitry Medvedev

At New Year’s, normally, people reflect on the past year. For Christians, this should be a time of prayerful recollection, perhaps, asking repentance for their sins. Of course, it is a time to thank the Lord for all the good that we received in the past year and for those things we shall receive in the coming year.

- Fr Mikhail Prokopenko, Communications Service of the Department for External Church Relations

Western Christmas in an Orthodox Land

In Russia, there are about 500,000 Christians who follow the Western usage, and everything is almost ready for Christmas celebrations. The last decoration has been placed on the tree, and the last figurine has been placed in the Christmas cave. As in previous years, Catholic churches in Russia shall tell their believers the wonderful story of Christ's appearance in the world.

[...]

The New Testament does not give an exact date for the birth of Jesus, and it was not until the fifth century that a date for the feast was indicated. In 431, the Third Ecumenical Council agreed to celebrate Christmas on 25 December. Evil tongues say the first Christian clergy set this date to fight pagan practices that were very popular in ancient Rome. Indeed, at that time, the people celebrated the heathen Saturnalia, a merry feast commemorating the dedication of the temple of Saturn, the god of agriculture, fertility, and time.

A believer prays in a Novgorod church

A difference between the Gregorian and the Julian calendar systems also made it unclear when to celebrate Christmas, a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate, Fr Sergei Zvonaryov said in an interview with the Voice of Russia. "The difference in the dates for the celebration of Christmas is connected with what calendar is used [for the determination of the fixed feasts], there is the Julian calendar, which is used by most Orthodox Christians, and there is the Gregorian calendar, which is used by the Western Churches and by a minority of Orthodox Christians. There is a 13-day difference between these two calendars. This is the reason why the Gregorian calendar marks Christmas on 25 December and the Julian calendar celebrates it on 7 January.

In Russia, Western Christmas is a quiet family holiday. After solemn mass at church, as a rule, believers go home to lay a festive table. When the first star appears in the sky, the Nativity Fast is over, and people are welcome to eat whatever they will. The table is usually laid with a white cloth and is decorated with fir-tree branches. A separate place at the table is meant for an unexpected guest. It is believed that unexpected guests on Christmas night are sent by Christ. As a rule, in the centre of the table there is a small pillow spread with special Christmas wafers, and each member of the family eats a piece of it, whilst others give their Christmas wishes to a person as they break a piece off the wafer. The rite is finished by a joint recitation of the prayer, 'Our Father'.

There is a beautiful custom arising in modern Russia, for, today, the Orthodox clergy take pains to greet the followers of the Western confessions with Christmas good-wishes on 25 December. We have common values and Christianity is our common faith. That is why we always greet other Christians when they celebrate Christmas and are glad to see them enjoying their holidays. Indeed, we are all Christians, and Christmas is a very significant time for all of us since it emphasizes the importance of the history of salvation of mankind, which occurred here on earth due to the birth of Jesus Christ".

- Voice of Russia World Service, 24th December 2008

Happy Christmas!

...never mind that is on the day according to the heretical, innovative, thrice-cursed, popish calendar.

We at Memoirs wish all Western Christians, as well as the Orthodox on the Revised Julian calendar, a most blessed feast of the Nativity!

To Christians who will be rejoicing in 13 days' time, we encourage you to prepare yourselves, persevere in the St Philip's Fast, and make ready to receive the most glorious incarnation of Our Lord!

"...Christmas is a feast of light. Not like the full daylight which illumines everything, but a glimmer beginning in the night and spreading out from a precise point in the universe: from the stable of Bethlehem, where the divine Child was born. Indeed, he is the light itself, which begins to radiate, as portrayed in so many paintings of the Nativity. He is the light whose appearance breaks through the gloom, dispels the darkness and enables us to understand the meaning and the value of our own lives and of all history."

- Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas 2008

90th Anniversary of the October Revolution

Dear Comrades:

On the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution, I have the honour to offer warm fraternal congratulations to my readers, and to all the comrades and friends present.

For thousands of years the working people of the world and all progressive humanity have dreamed of building a society in which there would be no exploitation of man by man, This dream was realized on one-sixth of the earth's land surface for the first time in history by the October Revolution. This revolution proves that, without the landlords and the bourgeoisie, the people are completely capable of building a free and happy new life in a planned way. It also proves that different nations of the world are completely capable of living together amicably once there is no imperialist oppression.

...or so it did, at least for a while.

Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, colour, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.

A more careful review of the facts will show that socialism is not sustainable - it does not work. Period. Every experiment has failed; every treatise has been decisively refuted at its logical roots. Places where we continue to dabble - education, medicine, etc - in our "mixed" economy, are unmitigated disasters.

It comes down to this:

1) Free people are not equal - and equal people are not free. I'm not referring to equality before the law - that is to say, equality in income and material wealth. We shouldn't get hung up about differences in wealth as result of people being themselves. If it's a result of artificial political barriers then we should do what we can to get rid of them - but don't try to place fundamentally unequal people into a homogeneous heap - it won't work and you'll destroy everything in trying. Read up on the histories of Stalin, Khmer Rouge, etc.

2) What belongs to you, you take care of; what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair. This is the magic of private property - and a big reason why socialism fails.

3) If you encourage something you get more of it; if you discourage something you get less of it. We are creatures of incentives and disincentives. What to break up families? Offer a bigger welfare check if the father splits. Want to get less work? Impose such high tax penalties on it that people decide it's not worth the effort... Want to discourage investment? How about a high capital gains tax?

4) Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.

5) Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes away from somebody, and a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you've got. This bears some serious reflection for those who think, "we can be different this time..."

To quote Lawrence Reed, president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy: "Liberty isn't just a luxury or a nice idea. It's not just a defensible idea or a happy circumstance. It's what makes just about everything else happen. Without it, life is a bore at best. At worst, there is no life at all."

Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea - in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.

Many of the intelligentsia remain convinced that if only there had been better leaders - people like themselves, for example - it would all have worked out fine, according to plan.

In all the very different societies around the world, however, the story of socialism has been a story of high hopes and bitter disappointments. Attempts to redistribute wealth repeatedly led to the redistribution of poverty.

Attempts to free ordinary people from oppression repeatedly led to what Mikhail Gorbachev frankly called "servility" to new despots.

Human nature has been at the heart of the failures of socialism to produce the results it sought, even when socialist leaders were idealists like Julius Nyerere in Tanzania or Pandit Nehru in India.

Nowhere have people been willing to work as well for the common good as they do for their own benefit. Perhaps in some other galaxy there are creatures who would, but the track record of socialism among human beings on earth shows that this is not the place.

Worst of all, the concentration of political power necessary to try to reduce economic inequalities has allowed tyrants like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to impose their notions and caprices on millions of others - draining them economically or slaughtering them en masse or exploiting them sexually.

There is no point blaming the tragedies of socialism on the flaws or corruption of particular leaders. Any system which allows some people to exercise unbridled power over other people is an open invitation to abuse, whether that system is called slavery or socialism or something else.

Socialism has long sought to create a heaven on earth but an even older philosophy pointed out that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

March 25

Today we mark the beginning of the liberation of the Hellenic people from the Turkish yoke. On March 25, 1821, Metropolitan Germanos of Patras blessed a Greek flag at the Monastery of Agia Lavra and proclaimed a national uprising. Greece declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire, beginning the Greek War of Independence.

The rallying song of Righas Pheraios, a poet brutally murdered by the Turks, is remembered today:

Ως πότε παλληκάρια θά ζούμε στά στενά
O brave young warriors, we shall live close together,
μονάχοι σάν λιοντάρια στίς ράχες τά βουνά
Lonely like the lions in the ridges of the mountains,

Καλύτερα μιάς ώρας ελεύθερη ζωή
It is better an hour of free life,
παρά σαράντα χρόνια σκλαβιά καί φυλακή.
Than forty years a slave in chains.

May God continue to bless the Hellenic nation for years to come!