Slava: A Serbian Orthodox Celebration

By the time this occurred, our children had come to live with us, which is one reason Kosta's father felt it was time for us to host the celebration. Kosta had only recently realized the Christian symbolism in the Slava when on his first year to host Slava, he had started to cut the Slava cake all the way through. His father stopped him and insisted the bread had to be broken. Only then did Kosta realize that this was really a celebration of Holy Communion. It had never been explained to him during all those years of family celebrations. It was the equivalent to him of finding out when he was forty that Easter meant more than the Easter bunny bringing eggs to children. Kosta had always celebrated with his family because it was a tradition, and after he became a Protestant Christan while in high school, he had always just halfheartedly gone along with it.

Once he saw the real meaning of Slava as a celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus, though, he was able to fully embrace it, and saw it as a way to share his own faith with his friends who were not Christian believers. When this happened, it made a drastic change in our Slava celebration. Whereas before it meant making the zjito and Slava cake, and maybe having special friends and Kosta's parents for dinner, it now became a very big deal.

Since we never knew any other Serbs anywhere we had lived, we had to invite friends and neighbors to come so they would know about it. But since the tradition was that you would just drop in, and RSVP was not considered necessary. I had to prepare a lot more food. Kosta would basically tell everyone he saw and everyone at church to drop on by that day anytime between 9 and 9. He also led them to expect there would be hot food available from lunch time until about 8 PM. This made my job in the kitchen rather large. Can you imagine planning an open house for an undetermined amount of people that would last all day?

The children really embraced Slava, and Jason would go all over the neighborhood inviting all his playmates and their families to come on over. Many of the playmates came on over several times during the day -- whenever they got hungry. Their parents usually came in the evening at dinner time. But the children helped with the house cleaning and meal preparations and running to bring more food and drinks from the refrigerator in the garage, and it all worked out and we had good times with our friends and neighbors.

One unique thing Kosta added to our celebration was to explain to visitors who had never come before what all the symbols and ceremonial foods meant and how they were used. For example, each year a portion of the last year's candle is lit the night before Slava to indicate that the family has been faithful in keeping their covenant with God during the year. The morning of Slava, the new candle is lit by the father. It symbolizes the light of the Gospel of Christ and the covenant that has passed through the generations to be faithful to Christ. Then the mother lights the wick floating in the bowl of oil, symbolizing that she will be faithful in praying for her husband and supporting him during the year as he protects and nurtures his family in their faith. The Slava cake represents Christ's body, who was the Bread of Life. The wheat (zjito) represents the resurrection of Christ.

The Slava cake itself is also full of symbolism. We have a wooden stamp we use to emboss the symbols for the names of Christ on the cake. Kosta and the children would make doves of dough to place around the cake before it was baked. It was Jason's idea to add a dough-sculpted Bible to the center of the cake, so we did it. Find out how we make the Slava cake here.

On the day after Slava, Kosta serves communion to his family. It is then he cuts a sign of the cross into the bottom of the bread and pours a bit of wine on it. Then breaks it and gives it to everyone in the family. Before that, in preparation for this day, we have been encouraged to make peace with and offer forgiveness to all who ask it of us. Slava is a time of reconciliation. Sometimes special friends have been invited to share this time with us. See the steps in breaking the bread below.

In the picture above, Kosta is explaining the symbolism of the cake to one of our visiting friends.