It’s Christmas today, and you would think it’s being celebrated in Serbia as well. It’s not, because we celebrate it on – 25th of December. Time is relative, people, just because you think it’s 25th today, doesn’t mean it really is the 25th.

Wikipedia articles on Julian and Gregorian calendar will explain in depth the history, differences and everything you want to know about the reasons for this confusion.

Serbian version of a Christmas tree, photo by Stojan Ilic

Short version – the Julian calender is about 14 days behind the Gregorian calender, and Serbian Orthodox Church decided not to make the shift from the former to the latter. That’s why Serbian 25th of December happens on 7th of January, and Serbian January 1st occurs on January 14th.

There are some who oppose this time lag in Serbia and suggest that we should synchronize the Serbian Orthodox holidays with the mainstream holiday calendar.

But it’s only because they fail to see the advantages! Let me try to list the reasons why we should stick to the current situation:

It doubles your pleasure:
Two opportunities to celebrate something (and eat and drink and have fun in the process) are better than one. In this case four opportunities if you count the double New Year. Serbian denizens working for foreign companies appreciate this fact with a special passion.

It is much more relaxed than the Gregorian Christmas.
No boxing day, no shopping rush hour, no war on Christmas, none of those crap. Just relax and enjoy the slow life. Imagine if we were to celebrate on the same day when the rest of the Christian world is stressed out!

You don’t have to buy presents:
It’s not the part of the Serbian Christmas tradition, so nobody will mind if you don’t buy anything for them. On the other hand it’s not forbidden to buy presents, so you won’t be bound by religious dogma to return a present if someone buys something to you. Did I mention that there is no Christmas shopping rush hour?

You also get to have a special Christmas tree:
Badnjak looks like an old school version of the westernized Christmas tree – like before it was pimped with decorations, angels and other bling-bling. It’s cheaper, lighter, there are no Chinese plastic versions of it (yet), and it’s more eco-friendly. Badnjak comes when the green tree (which is bought because of the first New Year) is already becoming to annoy you.

It’s a great conversation starter as shown in the following example:
A great looking individual: “Hey, merry Christmas!”
You: “Thanks, but I celebrate it in two weeks”
A great looking individual: “Really, how come?”
You: “Well, [the version of the story that somehow makes you look cool]”
A great looking individual: “Wow, how cool! Let’s make out!”
You:

I believe there’s more, but these are the first to come to mind. You can expect another “Merry Christmas” from this blog in about two weeks.

Music band Vrelo is having problems getting popular home in Serbia, despite the fact that the songs they are performing are all traditional Serbian songs (in modern production).
On the other hand, they are doing pretty good abroad. Here they are on BBC’s “Next Big thing” show, where last year they won second place:

It’s not the [...]

An interesting way of fighting movie piracy: movie distributor Tuck decided not to run film “What Just Happened” in Belgrade cinemas because the copy of the movie is already freely available on the internet but it’s also possible to buy it at black market stands in the city.

After a series of mutual genocide charges we’re going over to some news of a completely opposite nature.
Fashion TV channel decided to start a special branch for the South East European market – that would say former Yugoslav countries (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro) plus probably some other, whatever falls under SEE these days.
The [...]

The most famous gay rodent turns 80 today, and it’s a good opportunity to explore some of the less known, but still interesting facts about Disney’s relation to the region.
In 1937, Mickey was censored in biggest Belgrade daily, Politika, because of the comic “The Monarch of Medioka” and it’s vague similarity to events in [...]

Who’s a believer and who’s careful about their predictions for the newly elected President of the US? Let’s see what Serbian or Serbian-based bloggers think.

All hail the next monument idea in Serbia – Belgrade rappers gathered around the hiphop forum Rad i Vizija are discussing the best place to honor Tupac Shakur, and so far Marinkova Bara seems like the best idea, because “there’s no place in Belgrade that looks more like a ghetto than this.” This Belgrade suburb [...]

I ran into an initiative on Facebook today to name a street in Belgrade after Milan Mladenovic, one of the greatest musician from ex-Yu, and I remembered that I wanted to mention a little something about Milan and EKV in a post since long time ago so I’ll use this as a reminder.
I remember a [...]