ISSUE 2
presented by:

 little thistles:

• Monsters
• Picture dictionary
• Lingva zoo
• My family and me
• There's no place
  like home

 and the older ones:

• Diaries
• Polemics
• People around us
• That wicked music
  by Van Gogh
• Come to my place!
• Echoes of my country
• 2 cool actors
  and a movie
• Give us a chance
  to travel
• My favourite magazine
• Buildings in Valjevo -
  beauties or eyesores
• Family festivals

Family Festivals

Christmas Eve (Day)
by David Maksimovic, 18

From all other holidays during the year, as well as such diverse and beautiful customs accompanying them, Christmas Eve stands out by the way it is celebrated, the picturesqueness of its rites, and the meanings it conveys. Just as the family patron's day is a recognizable sign of the Serbs, so is the yule-log a unique Serbian distinction. The yule-log, which is mostly a log, stump or a branch from an oak tree, is cut ceremoniously, in silence, before the sun appears in the east part of the horizon, as a sacrifice to the rising sun. Burning of the yule-log, and its sprinkling with wheat and coating with milk and honey, first of all serves to foster fertility and crops, prosperity and good health, at the same time representing a transition from the old to the new year. It is especially important that on this day the whole family should gather together in their home. Today, Christmas Eve is mostly celebrated with an appropriate fasting meal, together with a branch from an oak-tree and a little bit of straw, with obligatory walnuts, which are a remnant of an old belief in the spirits of ancestors.