Easter has been about dying eggs for as long as I can remember, but in my family – as well as in many other Serbian families – the holiday has been influenced by changing ideologies and regimes.
Sunday, April 8, will be the very first Easter for my 10-month-old son Sergej.
Neither my husband nor I is truly religious, but we’ve decided to follow some of the traditions, so Sergej will be watching us, dying and decorating eggs – and possibly trying to smash as much as he can fetch.
My family has also never been religious. I can’t really remember my parents ever going to church or praying to God, but we’ve always respected traditions and celebrated Christmas, Easter, and our slava (a family’s patron saint).
My mom would say that God has little to do with tradition. “You either believe or you don’t in God, but traditions you respect,” she argues.
The fact that my son is about to celebrate his first Easter – or Uskrs in Serbian – made me think about how our stance on religion and religious holidays have changed so much since the middle of the last century in Serbia, and I have begun to wonder how those political changes affected my family’s ‘treatment’ of Easter.
My parents’ indifference towards religion came from the fact that they were both born and raised in Tito’s Yugoslavia, where Communism and religion simply didn’t go well together. Once the Communists came to power after WWII ended, religion was no longer publically acceptable, but instead remained a part of people’s private lives.
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