re: #1 Vicious Babushka

en.wikipedia.org

Eastern Orthodox Church

The feast is celebrated with an All-Night Vigil, beginning the evening of December 31. The hymns of the feast are combined with those for Saint Basil the Great. After the Divine Liturgy the next morning, Russian Orthodox churches often celebrate a New Year Molieben (service of intercession) to pray for God’s blessing for the beginning of the civil New Year (Orthodox commemorate the Indiction, or Ecclesiastical New Year, on September 1).

On the Julian calendar, 1 January will correspond, until 2100, to 14 January on the Gregorian Calendar.[6] Accordingly, in Russia, 14 January in the civil calendar is known as “The Old New Year”, since it corresponds to 1 January in the Julian Calendar, still used by the Church.

[edit] Roman Catholic Church

Until the 15th century the Catholic Church celebrated the Circumcision and what is now the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus together. The emphasis on the latter in the preaching of Saint Bernardino of Siena appears to be the origin of the de-coupling.