Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas

Russian President Vladimir Putin visits a children's hospice on Orthodox Christmas Eve on January 6 in St. Petersburg. Russia is the world's largest predominantly Orthodox country, followed by Ukraine. A lot of holiday traditions are still connected to New Year's Eve on December 31, however, including the exchanging of gifts.

People attend a service on Orthodox Christmas Eve at the Andrew the Apostle Cathedral in Vladivostok, Russia. The Orthodox Church calendar is based on the Julian calendar. The modern calendar used in most parts of the world dates back to 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII consulted astronomers and replaced the Julian system with the Gregorian calendar to reduce annual variation in the date of Easter.

Serbian Patriarch Irinej is the spiritual leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Here, he attends a ceremonial burning of dried oak branches, a tradition on Orthodox Christmas Eve, in front of the Church of St. Sava in Belgrade, Serbia. The majority of Serbs are followers of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Orthodox Christians in Bosnia and Herzegovina also belong to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Here, Bosnian Orthodox priest Marko Males leads a mass in the Church of the Holy Mother of God in Zenica.

Many Orthodox Christians celebrate mass on Christmas Eve at the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. The church, built on the site where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born, is administered jointly by the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian Apostolic, and Syriac Orthodox churches.