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 Kva
Posts: 313 Status: Viscount Karma: +132 [+1] [-1]   |
Subject: Christmas | |||||
| Now as you may or may not know Serbs are mostly orthodox Christians and our church still follows old Julian calender so Christmas here comes on January 7th (as Kami said: I knew they lied to me, Santa can't get to all houses in time so they split it.). Now on our Christmas there is no Santa, some tries have been made to introduce it called Deda Mraz (but he comes on New Year) and there's mostly no gifts on Christmas. It's a family holiday, with some rituals that date paganism and belief in god Perun, supreme god that symbolizes in oak. I used to go with my grandpa to the woods early in the morning to the woods to bring a small oak or a branch of one called Badnjak. Before going it was the ritual to announce it by firing guns or small canons (firing guns is very common here on holidays and weddings, it dates from Ottoman invasion and was suppose to mean: we're Christians and we're going to celebrate this day, there's many of us and we also have a lot of guns so if you try to stop it, there's going to be a bloodshed). Before cutting badnjak (don't even try to pronounce it) I remember my grandfather saying a little thanks and a pray. Than at the Christmas Eve he'd come into the house carrying it and my grandmother would greet him at the door (you can find commonly used lines on Wikipedia). Then she's shower him with grains and he'd bring the badnjak to the fire when he'd say a pray to God wishing the family good health and prosperity (line is much more powerful, but I can't translate it good enough) then takes a drink of wine, fills the jug again and passes it to the rest of the family. After this us kids with grandma would lay the straw and make sounds like small chickens... Then comes Christmas Eve dinner (Christmas day is fasting day), before which there is a prayer that I use to say on old Slavonic language. When it comes to Christmas day... In the morning comes polozajnik, roughly speaking, first visitor (it's usually prearranged) to enters the house on the Chrimstams day, there is a ritual there too of course and he or she is the only one to receive a gift. Then comes a lot of things, but now I can remember rides on the horse carts through the village, big dinner with cesnica (round loaf of bread in which there a coin symbol of wealth that the finder will get in the future), a lot of meat, usually entire pig would be baked for this day, cakes etc. If you want to find more coherent description of this day you can see it on wikipedia and check the youtube. |
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