OTMAA's birthdays/birthplaces

[Georgiy]

The Gregorian advanced a day, so Olga's birthday (for example) is now the 16th of November on the Western Calendar. On the Julian calendar it is still 3 November.

[lostfan]

Ah, I get it now. I don't think I've ever seen Tatiana's birthday written as anything other than May 29/Jun 11 but for Olga and Maria, strangely, they're usually listed with their 19th century birthdates, Nov 15 and Jun 26.

Thanks for clearing it up for me.

[Beth]

(shifts feet and looks embarrased!)
Thanks for your vote of confidence. I'm not such a big or deep mine however - just a very few things I know heaps about, a great number of things about which I am quite ignorant.

But Georgi Georgievich, you are probably the most knowledgeable person about Orthodox doings on this site, especially now that Pravoslavnaya has gone........

[Georgiy]

I wish she was still here.

[Maria_Pavlovna]

What's odd Mandie? Do you mean the double dates,.)

yes, not in a disrepecting way , it just a little odd for a RC.  

Thanks for info.

[ferngully]

why did she go? (just being curious)
selina            xxxxxxx

[Georgiy]

I suspect (but am not sure), that she got fed up with a spat between her and a supporter of an Alexei claiment (said claiment doesn't have haemophilia), and some of the ways he addressed her seemed to me to be insulting, but written in the nicest possible way (i.e. flattery but being used to deride.) This is just speculation on my behalf, but I felt in her posts she was feeling more and more frustrated. It could be, however, she had personal reasons for leaving the forum. :-/

[ferngully]

fair enough, thanks for explaining
selina                 xxxxxxxxxx

[Alexandra]

I think the confusion between the Julian and Gregorian calendars is not helped by historians who merely show the  two different dates in books, without realising that some readers need a footnote at least to help them understand what is going on! Then, when you realise that the gap between the two systems widens by one day each century, no wonder some people begin to wonder, 'Well, just when IS Olga's (or Tatiana's, or everybody else's) birthday, anyway?' I agree with Georgiy (not that that is unusual!) - it's best to stick with the Orthodox calendar if we want to observe their birthdays.
A bit more of the story, just so people won't think the Orthodox are the only ones with all the fun ...
The rest of Europe 'came on board' with the Gregorian calendar at different times, from the late 16th century onward, but nearly everybody had agreed to use it by 1752. If you are, say, a Tudor or Stuart historian, it can drive you daft trying to recalculate dates in the sixteenth century ... and matters are not helped when you remember that New Year's Day, in some places, was held to be the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25). In 'old' Russia, the New Year began in September, I have read (Georgiy, do you happen to know when they stopped that observance?).
Why did Russia not adopt the Gregorian usage until 1918? Most historians hold Peter the Great responsible for that ... it is surmised that he had reformed quite enough, as far as Russians were concerned, and they put their foot down about the notion of meddling with their sense of time. His successors left well enough alone, too, including Ekaterina Velikaiia, and so it was not until 1918 that the change finally happened.

[Georgiy]

Hi Alexandra,
The Church New Year still begins on 1 September, that hasn't changed. In some ways it is nice, to be able to observe a new year quietly and peacefully, seperate from the hustle and bustle of the worldly new year celebrations. But (at our Church) we also observe the January 1 New Year too - but it is quite funny - first we have (Gregorian) New Year (though not at Church) which I jokingly call 'New' New Year, then on the 14th the Church has New Year (which I call 'Old' New Year), then on 14 September is the Church New Year.

The reason why Russia didn't change until 1918, was that until the Bolshevik takeover, Russia was an Orthodox country. The Gregorian calendar might be astronomically wonderful, but it absolutely and utterly mucks up the observance of Feasts in the Church, in particular Easter, which according to Church canons, both Catholic and Orthodox, must not occur before the Jewish Passover. However with the Gregorian calendar, Easter is occurring more and more often before Passover, and this trend was noted with some degree of alarm in a (western) book from the 19th Century I read some time ago. (I can't remember the details of the book though). With the Julian Calendar, Easter never occurs before Passover. Some of the Orthodox countries changed to a varient of the Gregorian in the 1920s (eg Greece), but this caused huge controversy and division - and in Greece this is still the case, there are Old Calendar Jurisdictions and new calendar ones - I understand they tried to make Old Calendar ones illegal. However, even Churches on the 'New' calendar use the old calendar for Easter and its associated feasts and fasts. (This creates another problem though in that sometimes the Apostles Fast which starts a week after Pentecost) ends up becoming a 'negative' fast of minus two weeks or something, as the fast starts on the old calendar but finishes on the new, and the Day of SS Peter and Paul can fall on the new calendar before the fast is due to start on the old.
There are many other problems involved with using the new calendar as well, but it is not my place to pass judgment on its merits or defects.
The Russian Church, Serbian Churhc, Japanese Church etc all still use the old Calendar. I think the majority of Orthodox believers are on the Old Calendar, though the majority of Orthodox countries are on the new, but i am not sure of my statistics here.

[Alexandra]

Hi, Georgiy, and thank you once again ... . I really wish that the Church in the West would realign Easter with Passover and therefore with the Orthodox Communions. While its failure to do so cannot of course vitiate the meaning of Easter, it does detract from its historical amplitude; Christians still tend to forget that the Holy Family was Jewish!
In Greece, I don't know when the calendrical experimentations went on - most probably the communists had a go at it - but I don;t know if in all the upheavals of the 1913-20s period, anyone tampered with the calendar. I do know Greek people with a son whose name is George, and so his nameday is April 23: but, depending upon whether it is still Lent, he does not always get to celebrate it on the 'right' day. And they seem to keep to a 'simplified' calendar, in which they just observe the namedays, Easter, and Christmas!!
I like the idea of New New Year and all the rest!

[Georgiy]

I think Greece changed the calendar in the 20s.

Being on the Old Calendar, my name day (St George) is May 6 new calendar (April 23 old calendar) - so it is almost never during Lent or Holy Week, which is great! My birthday however falls during the Nativity Fast, so I have to be careful with what kinds of food I can serve up - luckily I know a variety of vegan cakes and party foods!

[dracona]

When were and each of the girls and Alexi born?  
Also, does anyone know where good pictures are of the girls and Alexandra in those formal/court(i guess) gowns?

[clockworkgirl21]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think Olga was born in Tzarskoe Selo, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia at Peterhof, and I think Aleksey in Tzarskoe Selo, but I'm even more unsure about him.

[Sarushka]

I believe all the children except Olga were born at Peterhof. (The younger 4 were all summer babies). Theres a nice timeline here:
http://www.livadia.org/dates.html
but it doesn't include time of birth. If you look around, though, there's a thread in each of the children's forums about their exact time of birth.