diff --git a/pelican/utils.py b/pelican/utils.py
index e4ae8abd..ec0baf08 100644
--- a/pelican/utils.py
+++ b/pelican/utils.py
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ import fnmatch
 from collections import defaultdict, Hashable
 from functools import partial
 
-from codecs import open
+from codecs import open, BOM_UTF8
 from datetime import datetime
 from itertools import groupby
 from jinja2 import Markup
@@ -187,7 +187,7 @@ def get_date(string):
 def pelican_open(filename):
     """Open a file and return it's content"""
     content = open(filename, encoding='utf-8').read()
-    if content[0] == codecs.BOM_UTF8.decode('utf8'):
+    if content[0] == BOM_UTF8.decode('utf8'):
         content = content[1:]
     return content