Everyone is welcome to take part in breaking the bread and the search for the coin, but the idea is that the kids find them. The public breaking of Christmas bread has been held in the Serbian capital for the past 23 years. Church bells at dawn mark the advent of Christmas Day. While some attend Church services, most Serbs stay at home, impatiently waiting for the first visitor, the polozajnik.
The polozajnik must enter the house with the right leg first as this will bring the family good luck in the year to come. The tradition of the polozajnik symbolises the three wise men from the East who came to worship the baby Jesus, and many people arrange for someone they cherish to be the first across their doorstep.
On entering the home, the polozajnik lights up the rest of the badnjak and makes sparks fly. The more sparks from the fire, the richer, healthier and happier the family will be. The polozajnik is then served with breakfast and when he — traditionally it should be a male — rises to leave, the family bestows presents on him in order to show how special he is to them. The next step in the celebration is the Christmas Day lunch, which is the highlight of the day.
Before the meal begins, the family breaks a special loaf of bread, the cesnica , a homemade loaf baked with a coin inside. Although many families now order the loaf from the nearby bakery, the baker still makes it with an obligatory coin. Before the meal starts, the family breaks the bread into pieces and each person start searching for a coin in his or her slice.
Good luck for the coming year is granted to whoever finds the coin. The hunt for the coin is followed by a prayer; only then can lunch can start. The meal is rich. Appetizers made of prsuta smoked ham , cheese and pies, are followed by the main course of pecenica roasted pork , sarma cabbage stuffed with meat and rice and several kinds of cake. Preparing pecenica is also rooted in pre-Christian rituals. It is the last day of the Christmas fast. Christmas is a very religious holiday and most people go to the Christmas Services.
There are a lot of old Serbian traditions associated with the countryside, which have now lost their meaning because more people live in towns and cities. On the morning of Christmas Eve, the father of the family used to go to the forest to cut a young oak called the 'Badnjak' Christmas Eve tree but today people just buy one. The Badnjak is then burnt like a Yule Log. On Christmas Day the dawn is greeted with church bells ringing and sometimes people firing guns into the air!
Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. December 16, Stanislava Zivojinov.
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Start Learning. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Probably the most confusing thing about Serbia to foreigners —after the fact that it is not Siberia— is that Christmas is celebrated on 7 January. Technically, however, it is not. It is celebrated on 25 December according to the Julian calendar, which is still in use by the Serbian Orthodox Church. However, this calendar is 13 days out of sync with the more commonly used Gregorian one, making the Christmas season a bit longer in Serbia.
However, for the rest of us there are some upsides. However, we have a whole bunch of weird and wonderful traditions of our own, some drawing from pre-Christian times. The days leading up to Christmas are rather jolly. In the three consecutive Sundays before Christmas, each family member has a turn— first children, then mothers, then fathers detinici, materice and ocevi —at being tied up and ransoming themselves.
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