God's peace - Christ is born, С Рождеством, Merry Christmas

[Nević Nenad]

Merry Christmas to all who are celebrating with the old (or Julian) calendar.


Which majority of orthodox (or eastern) christian churches do.


So, in russian: С Рождеством ("with merry born)


In serbian: Hristos se rodi! Vaistinu se rodi! (Christ is born! Truly he is born!)


Orthodox christmas is a bit different from others, because it is before everything religious holiday, not secular, such as in the West. The focus is more on Jesus role as a Christ, and less on the man (Jesus) himself. So no Santa Claus either, and iconography and symbols are different.


And then there are differences how orthodox churches celebrate. If you want to see real byzantine celebrating customs, you go to the russian or greek church. If you want to see real loud show, you go to some arab or palestinian church. If you want nice Christmas you go to Romania. If you want to see how celtic and slavic pagan rituals were looking you go to serbian or bulgarian christmas (especially serbian family christmas together with the "holly oak" tree and "feeding the bad spirits" so that new year could be better than previous )


Merry Christmas!

 

[Nević Nenad]

This is "burning the oak" in porch of temple of Saint Pantalaimon in town of Nis:

And this is how Serbs from Mitrovica in Kosovo did it:

 

[Breo]

Merry Christmas, @Nević Nenad
And Hristos se rodi! Vaistinu se rodi! (though I don´t speak Serbian :)