Christmas in January for Armenians : Religion: Karekin II, based in Beirut, officiates at ceremony at a congregation in Encino. Church is one of a handful that holds the observance early in the new year.

Armenian pontiff Catholicos Karekin II celebrated Christmas rites Thursday before 2,500 worshipers, including a woman who last saw him in 1983 in Cyprus and a 22-year-old convert who was impressed with the ceremonial pomp.

Karekin II, based in Beirut, is one of two spiritual leaders in the world for Armenian Christians who follow the ancient rites. He began a 19-day California visit this week.

Alice Halladjian traveled from Glendale to the Holy Martyrs Armenian Apostolic Church in Encino so that she could see Karekin II arrive for the 11 a.m. Pontifical Divine Liturgy. The Armenian Apostolic Church is one of a handful of Eastern church bodies that have kept an early January date for Christmas, in contrast to the December observance in most of Christendom.

“She never misses a Sunday or any other service,” Kevork Halladjian said of his mother, who emigrated from Greece in 1990.

Emerging later in gold-embroidered vestments and miter (and the inevitable portable microphone almost invisible in the folds of his garb), the 61-year-old Karekin II stepped under a red canopy and onto a red carpet as incense wafted along his route to the large church hall.

Watching all this while holding a 2-month-old baby wrapped in a blanket was red-haired Angelique Meshefedjian, 22, of Van Nuys, who has been married to a man of Armenian heritage for two years.

“I was married and baptized in this church, but this is the first time I’ve come for a service,” she said, adding that her background is nondenominational Christian.

“I like the atmosphere,” she said. “They put on a nice performance.”

Karekin II, an Oxford-educated prelate who is articulate in English but speaks mostly in Armenian at services, will officiate at Armenian Memorial Day ceremonies today at Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn Memorial Park and at the Armenian Martyrs Monument in Montebello’s Bicknell Park.

He will return Saturday night to Holy Martyrs church to speak at a fund-raising banquet for the church’s high school. The congregation also has a school campus in Northridge for lower grades.

In an animated sermon during Thursday’s three-hour rites, the pontiff exhorted church members to make personal sacrifices to support Armenian schools. He referred briefly in English to Gov. Pete Wilson’s State of the State Address on Wednesday in which the governor said new jobs and safe streets were going to be twin pillars of his administration this year.

“How can we get safe streets and new jobs without genuine education?” Karekin II asked.

As thousands crowded the church’s main hall and the 250-seat church where the services were relayed by close-circuit television, hundreds of other Armenian Americans were attending St. Peter Armenian Church not far away in Van Nuys.

St. Peter is aligned with the branch of the ancient church based in Etchmaidzin, the Republic of Armenia, currently headed by Vazken I. The break occurred in 1933 in disputes over whether the Armenian-based church was free of Soviet influence.

But with the breakup of the Soviet Union and especially after the disastrous 1988 earthquake in Armenia, leaders of the two church bodies have worked toward reconciliation.

“We have unity, the only questions left are administrative,” Karekin II said to reporters Thursday. “In due course, it will happen if we get stronger cooperation in the ranks of ordinary people.”

An estimated 300,000 Armenians in Southern California are associated with one wing of the historic church or the other. Nevertheless, many Armenian Americans have gravitated to other churches, such as former Gov. George Deukmejian, an Episcopalian, and the 1,000 active members of the United Armenian Congregational Church in Cahuenga Pass. That congregation held Christmas services on both Dec. 25 and Thursday night in keeping with their bicultural tradition.

When Jan. 6 falls on a weekday, Armenian churches have found that morning rites have not been well-attended--except in recent years as the tide of immigrants has grown, priests said.

Holy Martyrs church especially has a high proportion of new arrivals in its congregation, according to the priests. But the occasion of His Holiness Karekin II officiating at the Christmas rites drew a much larger crowd.

“Last year, when Jan. 6 was on a Monday, we had only 25% of this crowd,” estimated Harout Shakelian, a car broker. “This is extraordinary.”