Silly how time flies , isn't it?
You spend one year in a blink of an eye.
Here, January is just madness.
Not a very lucky month for pigs I'm afraid :).
Loads of pork meat, cabbage rolls, pitas and gallons of infamous (homemade) rakija, wine
and - of course, homemade cookies.
Every January, I like to remember our little Christmas traditions when I was a child.
Me and my cousins would spent winter holidays at our Nanna's, in a village near by.
Oh happy days these were.
Yugoslavia was a communist country.
You were not allowed to have any religious traditions.
Winters were soooo cold, with lots of snow.
We would spend all days outside until our socks and underwear got wet and fingers and noses turned blue.
We always tried to heat each other which only made it worse.
Kids...
Nanna loved Christmas.
Did not care she was living in the land of communists.
She would collect sweets, walnuts etc. for months and she would hide it in a hey in front of the stove at Christmas.
On the Christmas morning, all of us kids would sit by the table, staring at the big yellow candle Nanna made.
And the scent of the incense was so intense.
She would take out this special bread she baked.
We did not care she decorated this bread with braids.
The thing we cared for was this coin - a little coin we knew she put in the bread.
We all, few pairs of little hands, would hold this bread and swirl it in circles three times.
And then, we would start pulling like mad!
Chopping little peaces of this bread trying to find a coin!
Haha, this was so great!
We always hated the bastard who found the coin 'cause we were told for this person the following year will be very special...
And then, of course, watching partisan movies was A MUST!
There was this one movie, that was on every year, which I still like to watch.
About handsome partisan who became a teacher at a public school in a small town and who falls in love with this beautiful teacher.
The school is mainly attended by war orphans who spent their days playing simple games, waiting for their relatives to come over and take them home.
And there was this German guy, a prisoner of war, who took care of the school and the kids there. Kids loved him.
This partisan teacher would tell all kinds of war stories to the kids, and when kids would start asking questions - he would just tell them 'Let's move on'.
''IDEMO DALJE...''
For long, this was a very popular simple phrase everyone was using.
Today, I have a big shinny Christmas tree.
And many movies to watch (thanks God for cable TV and Pirate Bay!).
But somehow, I feel sorry for the kids today,
they will never know the real joy of simple Christmas I guess.
Merry Christmas.
Me.
