Beograd is now copying Central European style Christmas markets. The event called “Beogradska zima” (Beogradian Winter) does not sit well with everyone.

Knez Mihajlova is crowded like I’ve never seen it before this January 1^st.

I’ve only spent one New Year’s Day in Serbia’s capital before. That was 19 years ago, on the first of my roughly 20 trips to Beograd. I recall it a lot emptier, quieter back then. Lonelier, even.

What wasn’t there were these Christmas styled wooden kiosks on Trg Republike and Knez Mihajlova proper.

Mulled wine, hot rakija, essentially a local grog variety, some fast food kiosks, some local craftmanship and lots of Christmas kitsch, much in tune with the inevitably kitschy design of the huts making up this Christmas market, with the True Spirit of Christmas every now and then.

Much like Zagreb Advent (see this photoreportage), just smaller, less coordinated and more chaotic. An inner-Yugo stereotype come true, come to think of it.

Except that this is, of course, officially not a Christmas market, and a Christmas market at the same time.

It’s “Beogradska zima” – Beogradian Winter. The city government defines this event as “stalna manifestacija u oblasti kulture od značaja za Grad Beograd. Ovom manifestacijom se obeležavaju božićni i novogodišnji praznici” “a permanent cultural event which is important to the City of Beograd. It marks the Christmas and New Year Holidays”.

What makes it different from the Christmas markets traditional to their places of origin – German speaking countries and their peripheries – is the dates. And that’s not just due to the Julian Calender the Serbian Orthodox Church still uses.

Even considering that this calender pushes most of the Church’s feasts two weeks back in relation to the Gregorian calender most countries and most Christian churches in the world use, Beogradska zima starts about two weeks late: On December 25^th (Gregorian calender), which is Dec 11^th on the Julian calender.

Traditionally, a Christmas or advent market would start with the beginning of the advent season, i.e. four Sundays before the feast itself, not two like in Beograd.

Kitsch and Revolution

Two Asian women pose for photos inside one of the decorations for this Christmas market – a larger-than-life Christmas ball like one hangs on Christmas trees – open, with a bench, so people can sit in it.

Another one is a horse drawn carriage. It’s apparently very popular with kids.

Yet another one resembles Christmas gifts.

Its frame bears signs of the student lead mass protests that have dominated public and political life in Serbia for more than a year now. (Read more about the protests here.)

On the stage it’s still quiet. It’s too early today for the music acts for kids that are usually performed here.

That there is a music stage stands on Trg Republike at all is a surprise in itself. It has much to do with the students’ protests.

Just a few weeks ago, the mayor of Beograd cancelled the traditional New Year’s concert of New Year’s Eve on this very square, with a second stage traditionally in front of the Serbian parliament just a few meters from here.

The official reason was that last year, a group of drunk people had tried to forcefully enter a cordoned off area for minors, and that there would be no concert until it could be ensured that kids were safe from drunk rowdies on Trg Republike. (See here for more info.)

Apparently, these concerns do not apply during other events at the same time at the same location.

This is Serbia. Not everything seems to need to make sense here.

People and groups selling on the street or performing for donations have proliferated on Knez Mihajlova during Beogradska Zima. This is not just in comparison to 19 years ago, when there was no Christmas market on the most important shopping street in Serbia’s capital. This is also in comparison to the tourist season in summer.

A Nod to Local Traditions

It’s not just the usual Roma kids playing violin and the lone and by now ageing rock musician, all of whom are by now staple performers of the area. And it’s not just the street vendors who have rebranded some of their usual merchandise to fit the holiday season.

It’s new groups such as these breakdancers. They draw a huge crowd.

Not everything needs to be traditional, it seems.

I could not determine whether or not the breakdance performance group was part of the official program of Beogradska zima, or were here hoping to profit off the relatively large crowd of tourists the Christmas market apparently attracts.

In front of Knez Mihajlova’s largest shopping center, a K 67 kiosk sells mulled wine as from the Christmas market of Nuremberg in Germany, Italian Christmas cakes, hot sausages “like back then”, and Nespresso coffee.

The K 67 is an icon from Yugoslav times. Designed by Saša Mächtig from Lubljana in the late 60’s, its modular design made it the most popular and widely used kiosk not just in Yugoslavia but in large parts primarily of Eastern Europe from the late 1960’s to the late 1980’s.

It’s seen a recent revival in many shapes and forms. (Read more about one of these here.)

This one looks like a modern-day replica rather than a reconstruction.

Albeit secular and from decisively socialist times, it is one of only two nods to local traditions I encounter on my entire trip through this part of Beogradska zima.

Why This Event Also Triggers Resentment

This is hardly a surprise. “What do they even want with that”, Mihailo tells me. “Do we really want a Beograd advent like they have their Zagreb advent now? What’s that got to do with our tradition?”

Mihailo is a student of philosophy, and puts himself on the more conservative side of the political spectrum. “We don’t have advent in our orthodox tradition. This is a very Catholic thing.”

For religious Orthodox Christians, the weeks before Christmas are Lent, or time of fasting, much like the weeks before Easter. For religious Orthodox Christians, this is far stricter than pre-Easter Lent is for Catholics.

“We don’t eat any animal products, such as milk, butter or eggs, let alone meat. Only fish is OK”, Katarina explains, another local I talk to.

This strict interpretation goes back to times before the split, or Great Schisma, between the Catholic and Orthodox Church in 1054. The Catholics have relaxed meal restrictions ever since. In Spring Lent, Catholics are supposed to forgo only meat. As far as advent is concerned, there are hardly any restrictions in place at all.

The Orthodox have kept the old rites. In Serbia, they even fill their beloved sarma with fish instead of minced meat.

Incidentally, this is the same diet as the largest heretical group of the Middle Ages prescribed for their priests and particularly devout: The Bogumils, who originated in today’s Bulgaria, and the Cathars, their Western offspring in Southern France and parts of Northern Italy.

They, too, exempted fish from the otherwise vegan diet.

While animal products were considered products of sex, and thus an unclean act, fish was thought to emanate from mud and water.

Lent has seen a revival among ethnic Serbs and Montenegrins in the region ever since the late 1980s. The rise of nationalism and the Capitalist Restauration during and in the wake of the breakup of socialist Yugoslavia went hand in hand with a religious revival, and in part were indeed based on it.

Many ethnic Croats became ostensibly pious Catholics, many Bosnjaks started practicing at least Ramadan, and many ethnic Serbs and Montenegrins started professing a deep belief in their Orthodox Church and its tradition – at least on the outside.

Religious institutions started gaining influence, and sometimes even dominance, over public and political life in the successor states of Yugoslavia, catered to by the newly emerged nationalist parties all over the place.

Though by far not every religious Serb is a nationalist, one has to keep this in the back of one’s mind to fully appreciate the extent of Mihailo’s and Katarina’s rejection of Beogradska zima.

Dušan, though not otherwise conservative or religious, feels similar. “Catholic traditions all are fine and fair. But what do they have to do with us”, he asks. “I have nothing against new traditions, but this feels a bit like we’re taking over theirs for no reason.”

With the bloody history of the 20^th century on the Balkans, this sentiment sits a lot more uneasy than it may appear to outsiders. The Ustaše, a Croat fascist puppet regime of the Third Reich, killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia. The Ustaše were very Catholic. The mass murders in Bosnia and Croatia during the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s ran along ethnic, and thus religious lines. Serbs in Bosnia committed the bulk of these war crimes, culminating in the genocide of Srebrenica in 1995.

The introduction of new customs associated with another religion are often seen as encroachment.

This was the case in Sarajevo, too. Bosnia’s capital with a Muslim majority population, has always had sizeable Orthodox, Catholic and Jewish minorities. “We did have advent on Ferhadija (Sarajevo’s main shopping street in the center)”, a friend from Sarajevo tells me. “This year, under the new mayor, they just didn’t put it up anymore”.

Sarajevo’s new mayor is Samir Avdić from the clericonationalist party Narod I Pravda.

“This can really be described as an example of Islamization, if you will”, my friend tells me.

A Complex History, and Family Friendly Rebel Chic

That Christmas markets trigger such sentiments almost ironically is in tune with their history. They first appeared in some cities in the Holy Roman Empire in the High and Late Middle Ages. They really took off with Reformation. Lutherans included them in their fight against the Catholic worship of saints. This reflects in the name they usually have in German: Christkindlmarkt. They always were a thing in Catholic majority regions in the HRE though.

Christmas markets never spread beyond what’s now Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with the exception of some German speaking border regions in neighboring countries, such as Alsace Lorraine, until the 1990’s.

With the global rise of Neoliberalism, cities all over what’s commonly called the Western world started hosting them: in Canada, in Belgium, in France, the Netherlands, the US, even Japan. They catered to the search for the seemingly authentic as opposed to the increasing commodification of everyday life and culture. A conservative and family friendly form of rebel chic, if you will.

That they are kitschy, and themselves a form of commercialization, was and is one of those contradictions of capitalist culture. It turns everything into a commodity, including traditions old and new, and invented ones, if necessary.

It Hardly Gets More Stereotypical Than This

One example is another local tradition this year’s Beogradska zima includes. Just around the corner from Trg Republike, a group of Roma brass musicians play to a medium sized crowd on Knez Mihajlova. Like the breakdancers on the other end of the street, they perform for tips.

This is a common sight on the Balkans, particularly in Serbia. Yet, one rarely sees Roma bands as big as this one.

At some point and time, most of the musicians stop blowing their trumpets and tubas and begin to sing.

It is, of course, Đurđevdan.

This traditional Roma song, called Ederlezi in Romanes, became the most successful Balkan song ever when the Sarajevo band Bijelo Dugme performed a translated cover version for a soundtrack of an Emir Kusturica movie in the late 1980’s.

It is particularly popular with ethnic Serbs, who celebrate a major religious holiday the 6^th of May (Gregorian calender), the day of Serbia’s patron saint, St. George. The day is called Đurđevdan.

Also, it features in just about every party with a Yugonostalgic theme.

More Pressing Matters

As how traditional Beogradians see Beogradska zima is hard to gauge. It was only introduced in 2022. While local and even national media dutifully feature its daily program, there doesn’t seem to be all that much public interest. I’ve found no coverage about the skepticism almost everybody I talked to has voiced in our private conversations.

Maybe this is also due to the fact that the introduction of this event is closely linked to Serbia’s ruling party, the clericonational SNS. It also runs Serbia’s capital.

When it comes to SNS and its activities, there are a lot more pressing matters to discuss publicly in Serbia than yet another kitschy and commercial pseudotradition it has introduced.

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