Filed under: Uncategorized
There’s one sure thing you can tell about people in Macedonia. They do like to celebrate. One can tell that just by looking at the official calendar of national and religious non-working days. The number of free days is somewhat around twenty; furthermore, if the non-working day happens to be on Sunday, they compensate it for you. Niccce.
Also, since the population consists of people from three different confessions, the number of holidays triples. Perhaps not for everybody, but, since Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim do communicate, everybody celebrates each other’s praznici.
As our neighbour, jolly old guy named Stevan, explained, Orthodox Christmas are celebrated for three days, not mentioning the Christmas Eve before the main day. And on the Eve of Christmas Eve (!) there is another tradition: the whole neighbourhood gathers under the street lamp, burns fires, eats, drinks, sings and dances.
“So, you will drink for the next three days?” I asked him knowningly.
“I’m already drinking for three days,” answered warm-hearted Stevan.
Living in a big house in Kisela Voda district, we were naturally also invited to see this strange tradition. Since my head was still spinning from the yester evening (volunteer’s life is for sure not the easy one), ok, I though, I’ll just go and see the fire, nothing more.
Things never go this way, do they? The neighbours didn’t want to let us go that easily, so we engaged in the recurring trip table-fire-table, tasting all the traditional dishes and domesticly made drinks. A few shots of perfect rakija, and my broken Macedonian language opened for strange discussions. If someone asked me now, how I could have discussed the times of Tito Yugoslavia with some sixty-year old Skopjean, couldn’t really say, couldn’t say for sure…
The tradition of Fire Night is probably one of the best things I found in this country. I suppose the privacy-oriented northerners could learn a lot from Macedonians. Everybody is at the table in this night: toddlers, children, teenagers, young couples, their parents and the parents of the parents. Everyone’s a friend and everyone’s welcomed, just the thing one needs during wintertime, when there’s a serious lack of sun and warmth.
Strangely enough, some young educated Macedonians don’t like the tradition so much. I guess it’s always like that: foreigners, who don’t have to live with the local traditions for twenty or more years, find them charming. A big part of the locals find them just annoying.
“Well, if you don’t like them, why you just won’t stay at home for the night?” I asked them.
“That’s exactly what we do,” they responded.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
