Have you ever thought what winter holidays in Estonia are? Our exchange student Maja from Serbia agreed to share the differences and similarities between Christmas and New Year celebration in her home country and in Estonia.
In Serbia most of
the population are Orthodox. The Orthodox community uses the old Julian
calendar so they celebrate Christmas on the 7th of January. A couple
of weeks before Christmas they fast: it is a
period were basically anything what is from animals (eggs, milk
products, meat) is not consumed; just fish is allowed. Not everybody does that
that, I guess, because it it hard to go to school or job without eating
properly.
Christmas food in Serbia
The day before
Christmas is the day when we eat very little food and prepare some food for the
Christmas meal. Before Christmas day we also have “badnjak” which is a mix of
dried oak tree branches, a little bit of corn and a little bit of dried
wheat. We store it under the table until
the evening before the Christmas day, when all the “badnjak” are burned
together in front of churches all around
Serbia. On Christmas morning we go to church for liturgy and at home there is a
big family lunch or dinner (or something in between) with a lot of special
Serbian food such as sarma, prebranac, podvarak, pita,…and so on, and of course
something sweet like orasnice, vanilice and big cakes (with a lot of calories,
but also very tasty!). In Estonia the Christmas food is also similar but on the
other hand totally different. In Estonia we also eat potatoes and meat, but in
addition to this verivorstid (blood sausages) and hapukapsas (sauerkraut) and
for dessert here is piparkook (gingerbread).
Maja's Christmas in Estonia
In Serbia I
celebrated Christmas mostly together with my parents, grandparents, uncle and
dog. There is always a lot of food like all around the world when people are
celebrating Christmas but we don`t get presents on Christmas like everywhere
else. No, we get them on New Year’s Eve when the presents are under the
Christmas tree and we take them without saying a poem to the Santa Claus.
Therefore a very weird thing for me in Estonia was that on Christmas Eve
children get presents: they sing to Santa Claus and then he gives them the
presents from his big bag. It is weird, but also cool, because children then
have motivation to learn different poems. Nowadays we have a similar tradition
in Serbia: Santa is invited to companys’ Christmas parties and the children of
the workers get presents before New Year’s Eve.
After the New Year’s Eve dinner the parents mostly stay home or go to restaurants to celebrate, and the “teenagers” (like me) go to different kind of parties. We also have our “Orthodox” New Year’s Eve on the 11th of January where usually everything works like normally, just the youngsters celebrate it at home or in clubs.
After the New Year’s Eve dinner the parents mostly stay home or go to restaurants to celebrate, and the “teenagers” (like me) go to different kind of parties. We also have our “Orthodox” New Year’s Eve on the 11th of January where usually everything works like normally, just the youngsters celebrate it at home or in clubs.
Christmas
decorations such as Advent wreath or Advent calendar are not so popular in
Serbia. But it doesn`t matter when or where: everywhere around the world
Christmas is a time to be with family, a
time of forgiveness and goodness, a time to start over and improve yourself; it
is filled with love and tenderness and shows that we should be more together
and care for each other. So Christmas is not very different in Serbia and
Estonia
And btw sometimes
we have also snow! HA!
Maja Simišić,
exchange student in Estonia 14/15 (Serbia, Belgrade)