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stepanzubkov / days-to-new-year

KDE Plasma 5 Widget that shows how many days until the new year/x-mas.
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Misleading (and possibly offensive) use of the terms "Orthodox" and "Catholic" #3

Closed cipricus closed 1 year ago

cipricus commented 1 year ago

I don't think you had any bad intentions, but I suspect some lack of information on this matters, something perfectly fine when you create this for yourself, but not when you make it public.

Short story:

Longer story:

The fact that Pope Gregory XIII corrected the old Julian calendar (set by Julius Caesar!) doesn't make the calendar "Catholic", it was first a matter of scientific knowledge, and everybody has adopted it for daily use. Religious and cultural differences caused that some countries have adopted it much later than others, but all did in the end. The old discrepancy is now reflected though in the difference of religious calendars between some Christians. All Protestant Europe, the Anglican and all Protestant and Neo-Protestant all over the world (including most of North America) have Christmas the same day as the Catholics. - But also Orthodox of Constantinople, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Antioch, Alexandria, Albania, Cyprus, Finland, and the Orthodox Church in America and some of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova have Christmas the same day as the Catholic and Protestant Christians because they have the same (Gregorian) calendar for religious and non-religious events, while what you call "Orthodox" Christmas day is the one followed based on the older Julian calendar (abandoned for non-religious events): in Ethiopia, Egypt, ex-USSR, ex-Yugoslavia. (As said, the Ethiopian and Egyptian/Coptic Christians are not "Orthodox".)

In fact, the Christmas of January 7th, 2023 is the Christmas of December 2022 of the Julian calendar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas#Date_according_to_Julian_calendar

You are free to call your Christmas the way you like, but don't act as if everybody should or - even worse: already does - the same. Fun fact maybe: in Romania, people call the 7th of January Christmas "the Russian" or "the Serbian" Christmas.

To make things more complicated, the Armenian Orthodox Church has it on the 6th of January (explicitly rejecting the calendar as the cause), but some of them on 19th of January because they are doing it on the 6th of the Julian calendar.

stepanzubkov commented 1 year ago

Hi, I replaced orthodox and catolic terms by julian and gregorian. Did it solve this problem :question:

cipricus commented 1 year ago

Hi, I replaced orthodox and catolic terms by julian and gregorian. Did it solve this problem question

Anyway, it would be better for a Protestant (or a Romanian or Bulgarian Orthodox) than seeing their Christmas being called "Catholic", but I don't think people would like seeing julian or gregorian written on their screen.

A solution would be to have julian and gregorian displayed just in settings, but on the screen it should just be "Christmas" (without orthodox, catholic or any other specification etc), because in 90% of cases people will select one and only one to be displayed anyway.

The best solution would be a rather different widget where people themselves would be able to select the date of their holy days and even their names.

stepanzubkov commented 1 year ago

Thanks, I'll take that into account. I really appreciate your help. About the last sentence: this widget was not conceived as a complex widget with many settings. I had an idea for a separate widget where you can select the events/holidays that you will see, maybe even a Kalendar integration. Perhaps I will implement this idea in the new year. Happy New Year :sparkles: ;)