When the Austrian consul in Belgrade, Antun Mihanović, took a boat to Zemun on the evening of December 31, 1836 to New Year's Eve In 1837, Anka Obrenović, daughter, was born in Belgrade Lord of Yevrem, looking through the frozen glass of the first snowflake, diligently wrote down the past day in her diary like an ordinary Saturday, only the nineteenth day of the month "December". Then there were two empires, with two calendars and different customs.
photo: wikipediaAntun Mihanovic
Mihanović wished the European ones, that in the company of classy ladies and half-drunk Austrian officers, he would not miss out on congratulations for all that he himself wished would come true for him in the coming months. That's why he moved to Zemun, where at that moment candles were lit in the wealthier houses and salons, roasts were brought to the table and decorated Christmas trees were being prepared for the reception. And there - he said in German when getting off the ship to his friend, a lieutenant who met him - down there, on the coast above the confluence of the Sava and the Danube, it will be completely dark even on the night in January when they think that the New Year, theirs, the Serbian New Year, is coming. Apart from the barking of dogs, nothing else will be heard from winter and hunger. When it dawns and when it sets, then only someone who remembers will say that the next year has begun. Turning his gaze away from the river, he added this to his already smiling friend: "And not to mention the Turks, they are more than six centuries behind the calendar..."
And indeed, twelve days later, when the first of January dawned according to the Julian calendar and in the place of his most recent service in Belgrade, as a frequent and dear guest in Jevrem Obrenović's house, Mihanović came early that morning to the host and his household and congratulated him according to the Orthodox rite Little Christmas, and then he was served pie, pork shoulder and cakes for breakfast. Only at the end did someone remember, it was Mrs. Tomania, that the old year had passed and the new year had begun, the others just looked at each other and gave her a blank stare, and Anka only dated the entire visit as "January 1, 1837". There was no welcome, no congratulations, no good wishes, no New Year's tree, no presents.
photo: wikipediaAnka Obrenovic
Herald of the Illyrian movement, learned bachelor Mihanović, lawyer and poet of the Croatian national anthem Our beautiful, staring at Jevrem's daughter, wished twelve days earlier in Zemun that the New Year would finally give him the hand of the poet Illyrians of Serbia, and in all the congratulations and juicy kisses on the cheeks that he received, he saw only one eye - the black eyes of the barbaric beauty Anka Obrenović, "the main Serbian writer". Zemun officers and their ladies seemed to know his greatest wish, so they discreetly whispered its fulfillment in his ear, squeezed his hand and smiled in the best mood.
Wandering between two calendars along the Danube and the Sava River for twelve whole days, the first foreign consul in the Principality of Serbia finally left the most elegant manor house in Belgrade with the taste of lukewarm tasteless water in his soul, without receiving a single congratulatory message, and headed in a carriage down the downhill alleys to his apartment on the Sava wharf in the Customs House building. Only at one point, looking away from the coachman, he gritted his teeth to himself: "Serbian New Year... for them it's really just a custom like any other..."
Exactly twenty years later, in 1857, when there was no Obrenović in Serbia, the defenders of the constitution led by Prince Karađorđević pursued a distinctly pro-Western and anti-Russian policy. However, due to a move that indicated a possible rapprochement with the other side, the French and British consul Sentandre and Fonblanc caused a diplomatic scandal by refusing to come to the court and congratulate the ruling prince on the Serbian New Year, like every year until then, like other consuls and the Belgrade vizier. Austrian diplomacy tried to save the image of the Serbian court's pro-Western policy. Her consul, Colonel Teodor-Teja Radosavljević, reported the event from Belgrade to his Minister of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, Count Buol, and the ambassador in Constantinople, Baron Prokeš-Osten, who, although furious, calmed him down with the assumption that it was probably the intrigues of Russian diplomacy, which wants to regain influence in Serbia after the defeat by the European powers in the Crimean War (1853-1856), and on whose side the opposition that supported the return of Obrenović to the Serbian throne. They did not know what kind of plot it was, but the Austrian consul was given the task of letting the French and British consul know "that Austria still exists in this world" and that it, as the closest neighbor, controls the situation and knows that Serbia is still standing on the European path. Thus, the custom called the Serbian New Year entered the European diplomacy of the 19th century in an attempt to save Serbia's foreign policy course. The well-known Tenka conspiracy against the prince's life, in the same year, accelerated events in the most unfavorable direction and at the transition from 1858 to 1859, the fall of Karađorđević and the entire constitutional defender regime really happened, in whose place the Obrenovićs returned as exponents of Russian policy in Serbia, the Balkans and in solving the Eastern Question against Turkey, that is, the Ottoman Empire on European soil.
The Serbian New Year as the actual beginning of the calendar year was held in Serbia until 1919, when the official state calendar was equalized in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by accepting the Gregorian calendar, again under the rule of Karađorđević, with a clear departure from Russia and its new imperial ideology - Bolshevism. The difference in the calendar in the 20th century was thirteen days, and the Serbian New Year was again reduced to a custom that was celebrated both privately and publicly, in the town's taverns and hotels, as a sentiment towards tradition, which naturally did not bother anyone or affect anything. It is celebrated at the same time as the official New Year, on January 1, only with a different choreography, which in the official celebration included a welcome (vigil), a New Year's tree (instead of a Christmas tree) and greetings, and for children, the appearance of Santa Claus who distributes gifts.
After the Second World War (1945) and the return of the now complete Russian influence (in the "Bolshevization of Yugoslavia"), very quickly traditional Serbian customs were prohibited by law. The Serbian New Year was deliberately wrongly called the Orthodox New Year (despite the numerous Orthodox nations that have long celebrated it according to the Gregorian calendar), with a distinctly religious dimension that, ostensibly as such, should have been completely suppressed and abolished, banned. Saint Sava also came under attack as a school celebrity and the greatest Serbian saint, as in 1948 he was officially declared only an ephemeral "traveling diplomat of a feudal court" whose values did not correspond to the new times.
In an irony of history, on January 13, 1953, the former president of the Yugoslav government, after eight years as prime minister, was declared president of the country. It was not a coup because in the one-party system he could have done the same thing that Napoleon III did in France at one time - declare himself emperor right away, without anyone being allowed to say a word against it, not even through the press. But the republican functions that Josip Broz Tito combined in his personality were just right for Napoleon III or at one time Octavian Augustus when he turned the Roman Republic into his empire, the highest republican functions in just one hand. Nevertheless, the people in Serbian cities and towns, and especially in the capital Belgrade, according to the press of the time, were so happy about that event that they did not leave the pub with loud music until the morning of January 14, and thus, under the guise of joy for getting the first president of Yugoslavia, they welcomed the Serbian New Year in 1953.
At the end of the 80s of the 20th century, the Serbian New Year, with bears and trumpeters according to Knez Mihailova and atypical choreography of false nationalism, like "yesterday's communists who cannot enter the church, and in the church they don't even know how to take off their hats in front of the cross, usually a military hat or a hat with a cockade", unfortunately becomes one of the symbols of political violence and populism, which provides him with spiritual support all the time. Like many holy places and symbols that false interpreters vulgarized and disgusted the people in the last 30-40 years, the concept of the old, Serbian New Year, from the time of the Serbian princes and kings of the 19th century, is slowly turning today into its surrogate, anti-meaning and idealessness. Not even Little Christmas was left of her.
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