You Might Be Orthodox If...

By ‘Dmitri Letterman’

• On Wednesdays and Fridays you eat Japanese food.

• You’re used to skipping breakfast on Sundays.

• You can automatically subtract 13 days from today’s date.

• On your first encounter with long words, you pronounce them stressing the ‘next to the next to last’ syllable.

• You wonder why the Pope crosses himself backwards when you see him on TV.

• You wear comfortable shoes to church, because you know you’ll be standing a long, long time.

• To you, a ‘topless’ gal is one without a headscarf.

• You get great deals on Christmas trees and Easter candy.

• You spend time figuring out the best way to remove smoke stains from your ceiling.

• When you see a shopping-mall Santa, your first instinct is to hold out your hands to get his blessing.

Runners-Up

• Before you pray, you say a prayer.

• You don’t flinch when someone throws water at you.

• When you first tell people who ask what religion you are, at first they think you’re Jewish. Oy!

• You’re experienced at removing wax from clothing.

• When you go to the movies, you and your spouse sit on different sides of the theatre (and you both feel uncomfortable sitting down in public).

• The service routinely starts at least 15 minutes late and lasts 2 ½ hours — and nobody around you complains.

• You know you’re in an Orthodox church when the priest says, ‘Let us complete our prayer to the Lord’, and there’s still half an hour to go.

• (Slavic) Every woman in church is called Mary, Irene or Helen.

• (Convert) There’s somebody in your church called Barsanuphius and you think nothing of it.

• You find yourself instinctively drawn to jurisdictional chaos. ‘I don’t believe in organized religion; I’m Orthodox!’

• At the end of Holy Week, you have rug burns on your forehead.

• Your Easter isn’t Easter without an all-night party (featuring vodka and 10 dishes of sausage with cheese).

Hat tip to The Young Fogey