Eve of the Oak Tree

Photos by Jelena Šekara

About the author: Sale explains how a non-believer came to love an Orthodox Christmas ritual.

I am, adamantly, an atheist. So is my wife, given her socialist-Yugoslav education, but she's not militant about it the way I am. Completely convinced that there is no omnipotent creator, the stories of Jesus' miraculous birth strike me as too preposterous to merit serious consideration. Celebrating the arrival of the 'Son of God' on December 25th is lost to my Roman Catholic childhood, replaced by ski trips with Torontonian Serbs at Quebec ski resorts. I came to feel so strongly about my non-belief that I pressured the Archdiocese of Montreal to remove my name from the baptismal registry just before our son was born. We didn't impose baptism on him, either. The sordid history of the Vatican, to say nothing of their absurd doctrine, convinced me to 'clean house' before we introduced a new life into the world. But ever since joining our local Sebian cultural association, whose activities take place at Montreal's Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church, I haven't missed a single Badnje Veče mass. Now how on earth does one square that with the views expressed above?

Well, here are my reasons. The amateur historian in me is attracted to a tradition that, as is often the case with Serbian customs held in stasis during the Ottoman occupation, echoes past epochs. The Eastern traditions of Byzantium preserved much of the Helenistic-Roman approach to ritual life. Christians from the Western churches read about 'frankincense' (tamjan) in the New Testament's nativity story, but few know what it is, what it smells like, and what its odour evokes in the mind of the Orthodox congregant. It's a special scent that brings me back to the peace and tranquility I discovered in every medieval monastery I have ever visited during our many trips to Serbia. At Badnje Veče, it fills my mind with a unique sense of continuity through different periods of antiquity, haunting me by bringing the ancient past right to my senses.

Then there are the details of the evening's experience. There’s the press of people crowded into our modest church, a warm refuge from January's frosty air. The Old Slavonic liturgy, chanted with reverberations of the Greco-Roman mystery cults they replaced. The choir, singing with sweet intonations of light and hope. The badnjak procession, with its origins in Slavic paganism. And the gathering of the community sharing goodwill, with none of what American capitalism has done to the Western Christmas traditions, having turned a once spiritual solstice into a tacky display of crude and excessive consumerism.

And finally, the best part of the evening: when we converge in the reception hall to share the splendid šumadijski čaj, the rakija-infused sweet tea, with friends we hadn't seen in a while. This tradition joins through metaphor two forms of warmth: a hot beverage with benevolence between people. It’s what one would expect, I suppose, at such an occasion. But there is always something that strikes me as unique and timeless in this exchange, an antidote to the rapidity of cultural change inherent to our modern age. I always come away feeling kinship with everyone in attendance, and this is not such a bad thing to renew, even if it is but once a year. We are a small yet diverse community, each of us with something special colouring the journey that led us here, depending on one's place of origin within the old federation.

But there is one thing I felt compelled to add, with some creativity, to the ancient formulation exchanged throughout the evening, when "Hristos se rodi!" is met with "Vaistinu se rodi!" Remember my afore-mentioned non-belief? In order to preserve the integrity of my secular-humanism, and simultaneously avoid hypocrisy on my part and offense to the church-goer, I devised a unique reply. 

"Pozdravimo svetlost!"