Why Ethiopia Celebrates Christmas on January 7

Ethiopia marks Christmas, known locally as Genna or Ledet, on January 7 rather than December 25, a date most of the world associates with the holiday. The gap comes down to which calendar is being used: the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church still follows the Julian calendar, the system much of the Christian world used before switching to the Gregorian calendar introduced in 1582, and the two calendars have drifted apart over the centuries to the point of running roughly seven to eight years and thirteen days out of sync.

Under Ethiopia’s own calendar, the holiday falls on Tahsas 29, a date that consistently lands on January 7 by the Gregorian reckoning most countries use today. Ethiopia isn’t alone in this: several other Orthodox Christian communities, including the Russian Orthodox Church, Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, and Orthodox churches in Eritrea, Serbia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and elsewhere, also observe Christmas on January 7 for the same calendrical reason, a shared practice that spans several distinct Orthodox traditions rather than a specifically Ethiopian innovation.

The lead-up to Genna carries its own established observance: Ethiopian Orthodox Christians undertake a 40-day fast beforehand known as Tsome Nebiyat, the Fast of the Prophets, during which observant members abstain from meat, dairy and other animal products. The fast ends with the Genna holiday itself, typically marked by an all-night church service on Christmas Eve followed by celebrations that continue into January 7, including a traditional game also called genna, a field hockey-like sport played with a curved stick and ball that some oral traditions associate with shepherds celebrating news of Christ’s birth, though that origin story is remembered as folklore rather than a documented historical account.

Genna sits within a broader Ethiopian calendar that runs its own distinct count of years, itself a product of a different calculation for when the Annunciation and Incarnation occurred than the one adopted in the Gregorian system, a difference that leaves the Ethiopian calendar roughly seven to eight years behind the Gregorian one depending on the month. That gap means Ethiopia’s New Year, Christmas, and other calendar-fixed holidays consistently land on dates distinct from their counterparts elsewhere, a visible daily reminder of a calendrical tradition that predates the Gregorian reform still used across most of the world.